Mike's Notes
This is great advice. I'm going to do this. Also, using commonplace books is a great suggestion. Thanks, Hana 😎
"A commonplace book is a personal notebook where a reader copies passages and questions from everything they read. Keeping one lets us carry questions from one book to the next." - Hana Lee Goldin
Card Catalog is a fantastic gem of a newsletter from Hana.
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Last Updated
10/10/2026
How to Read a Book
By: Hana Lee Goldin, MLIS
Card Catalog: 30/09/2026
Hana Lee Goldin, MLIS: Your personal librarian for the AI age. Forever in the pursuit of exploring how we find, filter, and feel about information.
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Quick summary
Reading a nonfiction book as more than its chapters changes what the book can give us. The pages around the chapters tell us how its argument is built, when it was written, who made it, and which conversation it joins. With that context in hand, every chapter carries more meaning.
Key takeaways
- Reading the table of contents before chapter one lets us follow the argument as it builds, step by step.
- Our own marks in the margins and a running note on the phone turn the book into a conversation we can return to.
- The notes and the bibliography hand us our next book, chosen by someone who spent years in the field.
Cracking open a new nonfiction book is one of the finest adventures a mind can go on. It’s portable and immediate, asking for almost nothing but curiosity, and not just a willingness to give sustained attention to one subject but a deep, abiding welcome of the attention itself. The book becomes both mentor and sparring partner all at once. For a little while, its subject occupies our thoughts, in the most delightful way. We dive deep into some niche and come up with our minds fuller, fed by the richest kind of mental nourishment.
There’s far more to a nonfiction book than its chapters, though. Most of us turn to chapter one, where the writing we came for begins. The pages at the front and back are less familiar and can look like formalities, so they tend to stay unread.
The pages we pass over carry records left by the people who made the book. A finished book passes through many hands, from an editor who pushes back on its logic to a designer who arranges its pages. Several of those hands leave a mark we can read. The publisher dates the book and names itself on the copyright page. A cataloger, who read the book before it reached a shelf, wrote the short block of catalog information printed on that same page. Behind the last chapter, the author’s own notes and acknowledgments sit next to an index, which an indexer built by combing every page for what a later reader might want to find.
Read alongside the chapters, those pages give a book a place in time and a circle of company that the chapters alone can’t. With the table of contents in mind, we walk into each chapter knowing what the author is trying to prove and how far along the argument we’ve come. A year on the copyright page lets us hear the book as a voice from its own moment, one whose claims carry a date and whose confidence we can weigh against everything learned since. The notes and bibliography introduce us to the company the author kept, the writers the author argued with and admired, and turn a single voice into a conversation we’re invited to join. An index lets us come back long after and find the passage that stayed with us, keeping the book ours past the last page.
In 1940, the philosopher Mortimer Adler published How to Read a Book, later revised with the editor Charles Van Doren. Adler taught readers to survey a book’s structure before reading it closely. A librarian begins there too, then asks different questions. Who made this book? What work does its argument rest on? Where does it sit among the other books on its subject?
Every book we read has a life with us that runs longer than the reading. It starts in a bookshop aisle or a library app, with a title that catches our eye, and can carry on for years after the last page, in a passage we return to or a book it led us toward. The pages around the chapters travel that whole distance with us. They do the most for us when we know which ones to reach for as we go, beginning with the moment we first pick a book up.
Before we start
We can learn a lot about a nonfiction book before reading any of it. With the book in hand, a few pages at the front and back answer two questions. The first is whether the book covers what we want to learn, and in how much depth. The second is what kind of reading we’re in for, from how recent the research is to how the argument is laid out. Answering those questions before chapter one means we start the book knowing what it can give us. On the next nonfiction book we pick up, these are the places to look:
- Check the year on the copyright page against how quickly the subject has changed.
- Look for an edition number on the copyright page. A second or later edition often opens with a new preface on what the author changed.
- Turn to the page about the author and the acknowledgments to see who trained the author and who funded the work.
- Scan the subject headings in the cataloging block on the copyright page, if the book has one. A heading the cover never mentions may point to a subject the book takes on and the marketing set aside.
- Read the chapter titles straight through, in order, before chapter one.
- Read the last paragraphs of the introduction, where authors often preview each chapter.
- Glance at the final pages of the last chapter, where the conclusion often states the whole case.
- Look up the one topic we came for in the index at the back. A lone page number may mean the book barely covers the subject. Many page numbers, broken into subentries, usually mean the book covers it in depth.
Glancing at these pages answers the questions we brought to the book. A slower look turns up more: how an argument changed across editions, what the book’s subject headings reveal, and where the author places their work among other writers. The first page to turn to sits behind the title page, where the copyright page records when the book came out and who published it.
The copyright page
- What it is: The publisher prints this page on the back of the title page to record who owns the book’s rights and when it came out.
- What it’s for: It names the house that produced the book and gives the year of publication, our starting point for asking how current the research is and how the book reached print.
- What it gives us: We can read each claim alongside the year it was made and notice which parts of the book newer work may have revised.
The copyright page sits on the back of the title page. Publishers use that page to record who owns the rights to the book and the year it was first published. The year is the line to read first, because it tells us when the book entered the conversation. A study of public health from decades ago can still be brilliant, though its statistics describe a world that has since moved on. With that year in mind, we can read the book as a report from its own moment, written by someone who could only know what was knowable then. The year tells us which claims may need checking against newer work before we repeat them. How much the year changes our reading depends on the field. Thirty years may matter less to a history of ancient Rome, where the central evidence often changes more slowly than it does in nutrition or computing.
A printing is a new batch of the same text; an edition changes the text itself. Many books show their printing history as a row of numbers, sometimes descending: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Printers call it a number line. Publishing conventions vary, but the lowest number still standing usually identifies the printing in our hands. A row whittled down to 7 means six earlier batches of the same edition were printed before ours. New editions often arrive with a new preface, where authors explain what they changed and why. Reading that preface first shows us where the argument shifted before we commit to the rest.
The publisher’s name on this page gives us one clue about how the book reached print. University presses often publish scholarly work and commonly send manuscripts to outside specialists for review before publication. Trade publishers usually publish for a general readership, with editors working closely on a book’s structure, clarity, and pace. Both kinds of publisher may seek expert advice, copyedit closely, or leave much of the factual checking to the author. Neither name guarantees accuracy. It tells us where to begin asking how the book was made, and how much checking we may need to do ourselves.
Besides the publisher, the person to get to know before we begin reading is whoever wrote the book. A page near the front or back gives the author’s training and earlier work. That tells us what they bring to the subject, whether a historian coming to a scientific question or a journalist who spent years inside an industry. The acknowledgments say more still, this time in the author’s own voice. They often name the people who read early drafts and the institutions that supported the research. Those names place the author inside a community of colleagues and mentors and show us the conversation the book grew out of. A history written from inside one school of thought, or a book funded by the industry it describes, can still be excellent. Reading the acknowledgments first tells us which community and point of view the book comes from. With that in mind, we can follow the author's arguments knowing the perspective behind them.
The cataloging block
- What it is: The cataloging block is a short catalog record printed on the copyright page, listing the book’s subject headings and shelf numbers.
- What it’s for: It gives libraries a standard way to describe the book and place it beside others on related subjects.
- What it gives us: Its subject headings show what the book substantially covers and give us a route to other books on the same subject.
The copyright page carries a second kind of entry, this one from a library rather than a publisher. On many books it appears as a boxed cluster of text lower on the page. Librarians call it the cataloging block, a catalog record printed inside the book itself. Its subject headings name the topics the book covers. Libraries use shared terms so books on one subject gather under the same heading instead of scattering across near synonyms. The classification numbers beneath them place the book on a shelf beside related work.
Not every book carries a cataloging block. When one does, its headings are still human choices, made inside an institution with its own history. Libraries revise their terms as language and understanding change, though the printed record stays as it was.
Reading the subject headings before chapter one shows us how a cataloger summarized the book in a handful of phrases. A history of a revolution might carry one heading for the war and another for the women of that era. That second heading tells us that women’s lives are substantial enough to the book for the cataloger to name them as a subject. When the headings line up with what the cover promises, the marketing has described the book fairly. When they name a subject the cover leaves out, we have found something the marketing set aside.
Each subject heading can be searched in a library catalog, including WorldCat. Search one, and the catalog gathers other books described with the same terms. The classification number can do the same work in a physical library: nearby numbers lead us toward books on related subjects. A cataloging block turns one book into a route through a shelf.
The table of contents and the introduction
- What it is: The contents page lists the chapters in order. The introduction often states the thesis and may preview what each chapter will do.
- What it’s for: Together they show the author’s plan before the argument begins.
- What it gives us: We meet each chapter knowing what work it is meant to do, which keeps the argument in view even in a long or difficult book.
Once a book has passed the checks on its copyright page and its cataloging block, the next pages show how its argument is built. The table of contents is the place to begin, since chapter titles read in order lay out the author’s case the way an outline lays out an essay. Mortimer Adler called this kind of survey inspectional reading: a look at a book’s structure before we read it closely. Reading the titles first hands us the author’s plan before we reach the argument itself.
The author’s plan, read off the chapter titles, lets us guess the argument before we’ve read a page. Picture a history whose chapters begin with a single town and end with the decisions of a distant capital. The sequence may suggest that the author sees local events as an explanation for national ones. Carrying that guess in our heads as we read turns every chapter into a small test of whether the author delivers. When the book surprises us, we feel the surprise. That feeling marks the place where the book changed our mind.
A contents page also shows proportion, which the text itself never announces. Page numbers beside each chapter reveal where the author spent the most space, often on the part of the case that needed the most defending. Books divided into larger parts offer another clue: their part titles show the argument’s main turns, with the chapters beneath them doing the work.
Authors of nonfiction often use the introduction to state their thesis outright and to name the scholars they’re arguing with, which turns a book that looked like a monologue into one side of a debate. Many introductions close with a preview of each chapter, which lets us check our reading of the contents against the author’s own summary. Adler also recommended glancing at the final pages before starting, because authors tend to restate the case there in its finished form. With the introduction and those closing pages read, we enter the text knowing where it begins and where it means to arrive, which frees us to watch how the author gets there.
Photo by Elijah Crouch on UnsplashWhile we’re reading
Even with the argument in view, attention tends to drift somewhere in the middle of a book. One cause is that we’ve only been receiving for a stretch, not responding. Our focus returns the moment we answer back. A mark in the margin or a question in a note keeps the author’s claim separate from our own response to it. When we come back months later, we can see what persuaded us and where we pushed back. Every habit that leaves such a record is one we already have, pointed at the case the author is building instead of at the lines we happened to like.
- Fold a corner or highlight the claims we doubt, alongside the lines we love.
- Keep one note on the phone or in a journal titled with the book’s name, and let the questions or comments pile up there.
- Park an unfamiliar name in that note and look it up later, rather than breaking off to search in the middle of a page.
- When a chapter ends, look at its notes at the back. They show the sources behind particular claims and may reveal where the author sees uncertainty or disagreement.
- Glance at the dates in the bibliography to see whether the author draws on recent work where the field calls for it.
Each of these habits fits into the reading we’re already doing. Kept up across a whole book, they leave a record of our exchange with the author, one that stays on the page and in our own notes after the reading is done. That record leads us naturally to the back of the book, where the author’s notes and bibliography show us the work beneath the argument.
What we add to the book
- What it is: Marginalia are the notes we write in a book’s margins. A commonplace book is the notebook where we collect passages and questions from everything we read.
- What it’s for: They turn reading from something we absorb into a conversation we take part in.
- What it gives us: The record we leave of what persuaded us and what didn’t keeps the book ours to argue with and return to.
Every page covered so far came from someone who helped make the book. Marginalia and the commonplace book come from us instead, written in as we read. By the time we reach the text, we know the argument the author intends to make. Each chapter becomes a step in the case. We can ask whether its evidence supports the claim it was meant to prove. The book becomes an argument we test.
Marginalia are the notes readers write in the margins. Plenty of us already keep a version of them without using the word. A folded corner marks a page we mean to return to. Highlighting in an e-reader, or photographing a page with a phone, saves the line that struck us. Pointing those habits at the argument, instead of at the lines we happened to like, turns reading into an exchange. A question mark beside a sweeping claim marks a place to push back. Underlining a quoted source flags a work to find later.
A commonplace book is a personal notebook where a reader copies passages and questions from everything they read. Keeping one lets us carry questions from one book to the next. The English philosopher John Locke devised an indexing method for his commonplace books so he could find an entry again by topic. The commonplace book’s modern form is the phone in our pocket. A notes app does what Locke’s index did, with a search bar instead of a system. One running note titled with the book’s name, where the photos and saved lines collect, is a commonplace book in everything but the binding.
When a book mentions an event or a thinker we don’t recognize, add the name to the running note and look it up later. We stay with the page for as long as it has our attention. Over time, those notes become a log of how different authors treat one subject. Sooner or later, two of those authors disagree. At that moment, the note turns into a research tool of our own. The back pages of a book with full notes and a bibliography supply that tool with its material.
The notes
- What it is: Notes are numbered entries tied to specific passages in the text, printed at the foot of each page or gathered at the back of the book.
- What it’s for: Each note leads us to the source behind a claim and may add the author’s own comment on it.
- What it gives us: Read alongside the chapter, notes show us how an argument rests on evidence and where the author’s interpretation begins.
Many books gather their notes at the back, though the notes belong to the reading itself. Each one is tied by a number to a passage in the chapter. Flipping back as we go, or reading a chapter’s notes the moment it ends, keeps each claim beside its evidence. Any source can be judged by what it was built on. The notes show that foundation claim by claim.
In the notes, many authors write more candidly than in the chapters. They argue with other scholars there and admit where the evidence runs thin. Reading a chapter’s notes right after the chapter shows us how a claim rests on evidence and where interpretation begins. A long note often marks a claim that needs more explanation than the chapter can hold. It may be where the evidence is contested, where the author qualifies the point, or where another argument waits just off the page.
Some nonfiction books carry no notes at all. Their claims may still rest on extensive reporting, archival work, or expert consultation, but the path back to the evidence is harder for a reader to follow. Look for a page headed Sources, Further Reading, or Selected Bibliography, and read the acknowledgments for the experts, archives, and institutions the author names. When a claim has no trail inside the book, write it down and check it against other reliable work before carrying it forward.
