Ryan Eisenhuth | September 3, 2026

The Ultimate Prerequisite

The great musical composers of history never just sat down and started writing a song. Instead, they spent hours listening to, playing, and studying the musical compositions of other songwriters. Then—and only then—were they prepared to compose their own music.

The same is true for writing class papers, journal articles, theses, and books. Just as musical composers must study the songs of others before they can write a good song, reading well is the ultimate prerequisite for writing well.

Indeed, reading well helps us to understand and stay up to date on the ongoing scholarly conversations of our respective disciplines. Reading well allows us to study and imitate the argument structures of manuscripts already deemed worthy of publication. Perhaps most important for busy graduate students, reading well enables us to save time for more pressing matters while still showing up to class prepared to discuss the materials.

In short, reading books well is an essential skill for successful graduate students. To help you learn how to read well or improve your reading skills, I share some insights from Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren’s (2014) How to Read a Book.  

How to Read a Book

To Adler and Van Doren, reading can be thought of as catching a baseball: the author is the pitcher, the text full of meaningful ideas is the ball, and you—as the reader—are the catcher. And just as the art of catching requires skill for snagging curveballs, fastballs, and knucklers, the art of reading requires skill for fielding every sort of communication as effectively as possible.

This, of course, is a more or less active process (after all, a well-positioned net can “catch” many pitches), but the more active you become as a reader, the higher your capacity to catch the author’s meaning. The following strategies are intended to help you become a more active reader as you make your way through graduate school.

1. Understand your goal. Adler and Van Doren assert that you will read differently depending on whether you are reading for information or reading to understand. To expand, knowing whether you are reading a book to gain conversational knowledge about its topic for class, critique an author’s methods or argument, or reference it in your own scholarship will shape how you approach the book. By starting with your goal, you will be able to make informed decisions about how much of your limited time and energy to give to this book.   

2. Start with systematic skimming. Before you read an entire book, Adler and Van Doren recommend familiarizing yourself with an author’s main contentions and metaphors by skimming the entire work. I recommend reading the first and last couple of pages of every chapter and the first sentence of every paragraph in between. By the time you finish this skimming, you will know the structure of the author’s argument, which chapters are most pivotal to the author’s argument, and whether it is worth granting the book a more in-depth reading.

3. Be a demanding reader. Reading a book for all its worth requires being a demanding reader by asking—and trying to answer—four questions as you read. According to Adler and Van Doren, these questions include:

• What is this book about as a whole? What are its essential themes?
• What is being said in detail, and how? What particular arguments constitute the author’s main message?
• Is the book true, in whole or part? To what extent do you agree or disagree with the author? Why?
• What of it? Why does the author think it’s important for you to know these things? What are the implications of this book for you, your research, your community, and your world? How, if at all, will you look at the world differently?

The habit of asking and answering these questions whenever you read is the mark of a reader who learns something valuable every time they pick up a book.

4. Make the book your own. In addition to reading between the lines, Adler and Van Doren encourage readers to write between the lines. Having a pencil in your hand will help you to remain alert and engage in a conversation with the author as you read. Taking note of thoughts, reactions, questions, areas of disagreement, and even references to other texts as you read will help you to remember what you’ve discovered from a book for long after you’ve finished reading. I recommend underlining key sentences, drawing a star next to the most important statements of the book, circling key words and phrases, and writing notes in the margin. Doing so will give you intellectual ownership of the book.

5. Summarize your discoveries. In addition to taking notes as you read, it is often worthwhile to note your key takeaways from each book. Adler and Van Doren recommend writing a one-sentence summary of the book, an outline of the entire book, a list of key concepts and their definitions, and a few crucial quotes with their page number. To this list, I would add a reference in your preferred citation style and any questions the book raises in your mind as you read.

While Adler and Van Doren encourage readers to keep these notes in the blank pages typically found just before a book’s back cover, I recommend typing them out on a computer. Having an easily accessible (and searchable) annotated bibliography of the most important things you have read will be invaluable to you as you prepare for your comprehensive exams and, eventually, write your thesis.

6. Join a community of readers. Finding someone with whom you can discuss the interesting things you read can help you to discover things you might have missed while reading, consider additional implications of a book, and better articulate your thoughts on a book. While a community like this is built into most graduate seminars, a “reading buddy,” a book club, or an online forum can be helpful places to continue the discovery process long after the book is returned to a shelf.

Conclusion: Make the Books Teach You

Understanding your goal, starting with systematic skimming, being a demanding reader, making the book your own, summarizing your discoveries, and joining a community of readers will make you a stronger reader of books than most other graduate students—but following these tips once is not enough to sustain your reading through an entire graduate program and, indeed, an entire lifetime.

To make your reading time as enlightening as possible through your whole life, it is necessary to make the books teach you. You must purposely select books that you disagree with, or that are too challenging for you. You must learn to treat reading as an active conversation with the author. You must make demanding reading a habitual practice. And you must work out your reading muscles in these ways almost every day.

As Adler and Van Doren conclude, reading in this way is not only intrinsically good or a means to serve your professional goals by becoming a better writer. Reading well keeps our minds, hearts, and souls alive and growing through our entire lives, so let’s get reading!

References

Adler, M. J., & Van Doren, C. (2014). How to read a book: The classic guide to intelligent reading. Simon & Schuster.

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