A book summary is not a book review.A book review is a description of the book including your opinions, interpretations, ideas, and critiques.A book summary, sometimes called a synopsis, it recaps all the main ideas and does not include outside commentary.

What is a Book Summary?

<ul><li>It helps solidify what you’ve learned. Summarizing a book in your own words makes you reflect on the information that just entered your brain. </li><li>It helps you quickly review ideas in the future. Why spend hours reading a book (especially non-fiction) if you’re just going to forget everything in a week?</li><li>It helps others. People love the wisdom and insights that come from books. What they don’t love is spending their precious time to actually read said books.</li></ul>

Why Write a Book Summary?

<ol><li>Decide who it’s for</li><li>Start reading (with a “teacher mindset”)</li><li>Highlight and take notes</li><li>Write mini-summaries for each chapter</li><li>Organize your mini-summaries</li><li>Condense main points to a bullet list</li><li>Use bullet list to write your final summary</li></ol>

How to Write a Book Summary, Step-by-Step

If it’s just for you, there are no rules. Feel free to leave out ideas you’re already familiar with (or don’t resonate with).If it’s an assignment or you’ll be sharing with others, you have to be more objective and include things whether you agree with them or not.

Decide Who It’s For

Your mindset is important here. Don’t just blaze through pages as fast as you can. Instead, read each page as if you had to teach the material to someone afterward.

Start reading (with a “teacher mindset”)

You might feel like it slows you down, but it’ll save you heaps of time in the long run.<ul><li>Highlight the book and take notes in the margins </li><li>Use stickies to mark pages and take notes </li><li>Take notes in a separate notebook</li></ul>

Highlight and Take Notes

Just take some minutes at the end of each chapter and use your highlights to fill out these form.<ul><li>Chapter number:  </li><li>Chapter title:  </li><li>Setting:  </li><li>Characters in chapter:  </li><li>New insights about characters:  </li><li>Main events:  </li><li>Problems & Resolutions:  </li><li>Foreshadowing / Flashbacks:  </li><li>Important quotes and revelations:  </li><li>Connections and Inconsistencies:  </li><li>Themes:  </li><li>Other thoughts:</li></ul>

Chapter Summary Worksheet Template (FICTION)

Just take some minutes at the end of each chapter and use your highlights to fill out these form.<ul><li>Chapter number:  </li><li>Chapter title:  </li><li>“Big ideas”:  </li><li>Arguments supporting big ideas:  </li><li>Interesting facts, stats, or analogies:  </li><li>Resonating quotes:  </li><li>Action steps:  </li><li>Other thoughts:</li></ul>

Chapter Summary Worksheet Template (NON FICTION)

For fiction books, group them by where they fall into the story structure:<ul><li>Beginning (Intro to characters, setting, problem) </li><li>Rising Action (Tension around problem builds) </li><li>Climax (Highest point in tension) </li><li>Falling Action (Resolving loose ends after tension is resolved) </li><li>Resolution (Closure)</li></ul>For nonfiction books, organize your mini-summaries by topic (use the Table of Contents to help).

Organize Your Mini-Summaries

Scan through each summary and pick out the most important ideas & plot points. Jot these down in bullet list form on a separate sheet of paper.  When deciding which fictional plot points to include, ask yourself, “Is this information vital for understanding the ‘big picture’ of the story?” If the answer is No, cut it.  For nonfiction books, make a bullet list of the main takeaways from each chapter (or topic) along with the best supporting arguments.

Condense Main Points Into a Bullet List

All you have to do is convert your bullet list to paragraph form. The key here is to avoid rambling. Remember, this is a summary. You’re not re-writing the entire book. If you have a specific page restriction, here’s another tip to stay under the limit:Page Limit ÷ Number of Chapters in Book = Number of Summary Pages Per ChapterSo, if you have a five-page limit and there are 10 chapters in the book, you would write roughly ½ page for each chapter.

Write Your Summary

So you want to learn how to write a book summary…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

How to Write a Book Summary, Step-by-Step (w/ Templates) - Copywriting Course

Passive readers forget things almost as quickly as they read them. Active readers, on the other hand, retain the bulk of what they read.The more that active readers read, the better they get. They develop a latticework of mental models to hang ideas on, further increasing retention. Active readers learn to differentiate good arguments and structures from bad ones. Passive readers who read a lot are not much further ahead than passive readers who read a little.

Active vs Passive Readers

“Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself. But each map was incomplete, and I would only locate the treasure if I read all the books, and so the process of finding my best self was an endless quest. And books themselves seemed to reflect this idea. Which is why the plot of every book ever can be boiled down to ‘someone is looking for something’.”

There are no rules when it comes to choosing books. We don’t have to read bestsellers, or classics, or books everyone else raves about.Focus on some combination of books that: stand the test of time; pique your interest; or resonate with your current situation.The more interesting and relevant we find a book, the more likely we are to remember its contents in the future.

Filter Your Reading

For older books, try to understand the historical context. For books written in an unfamiliar country, try to understand the cultural context. Some helpful questions to ask include:<ul><li>Why did the author write this? </li><li>What is their background?</li><li>What else have they written?</li><li>Where was it written?</li><li>What was the political, economic, and cultural situation at the time of writing?</li><li>Has the book been translated or reprinted?</li><li>Did any important events happen during the writing of the book?</li></ul>

Get Some Context of the Book

What are you reading this book for? Entertainment? To understand something or someone you don’t know? To get better at your job? To improve your health? To learn a skill? To help build a business?You have to have some idea of what you want to get from the book. You don’t just want to collect endless amounts of useless information. That will never stick.

Know Your Why

Before starting to read a book (particularly non-fiction), skim through the index, contents page, preface, and inside the jacket to get an idea of the subject matter.

Intelligent Skimming

Matching books to our location and circumstances can be powerful. Books will have a greater resonance as they become part of an experience rather than just supplementing it.Take a look at your own situation and decide on genres or authors that might help you overcome any current challenges. Whatever your state of affairs, someone has been in the same place. Someone has felt the same feelings and thought the same thoughts and written about it. It’s up to you to find that book.

Match the Book to Your Environment

“In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.”

Making notes is an important foundation for reflecting and integrating what you read into your mind. Start by writing a short summary of each chapter and transcribing any meaningful passages or phrases.Jot down connections and tangential thoughts, underline key passages and make a habit of building a dialogue with the author.The more you write, the more active your mind will be while reading.

Take Notes and Mark Up the Book

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind."

education

Learning & Education

How to Remember What You Read

<ul><li>Consider your purpose for reading and what you need to be able to understand, know, or do after reading.</li><li>Determine what you already know about the material you are to read.</li><li>Give the text an initial glance, noting headings, diagrams, tables, pictures, bolded words, summaries, and key questions. Consider reading introductions and conclusions to gather main ideas.</li><li>Plan to break your reading into manageable chunks.</li></ul>

Before reading

<ul><li>As soon as you notice your mind drifting, stop and consider your needs.</li><li>Develop a key/system to note the following in the text: key ideas/major points, unfamiliar words/unclear information, key words and phrases, important information, and connections.</li><li>Summarize the main points and two or three key details in your own words.</li></ul>

While reading

<ul><li>Create an outline of the text from memory</li><li>Discuss the material with a friend or classmate.</li><li>Write down everything you remember from the reading in 5 minutes.</li><li>Identify the important concepts from the reading and provide examples and non-examples of each concept.</li><li>Create a concept map from memory to illustrate your learning from the assigned reading.</li></ul>

After reading

Reading Comprehension Tips - Learning Center

Whatever problem you’re struggling with is probably addressed in some book somewhere written by someone a lot smarter than you.This is all written down, often in the first person. Read it.A look at any random sampling of successful people finds a common trait: a love of books and an education that was primarily self-driven.

Why We Read

<ul><li>The key to reading lots of book begins with no longer thinking of it as some extra activity that you do. </li><li>Don’t borrow books, build your library instead and take pride in that.</li><li>Don’t just passively read. Make reading an active process. Make notes and comments to yourself as you read (this is called marginalia). If you see an anecdote or quote you like, transfer it to a commonplace book and use a system to organize and store all of it.</li></ul>

How to Read Lots of Books

Warren Buffett is undoubtedly considered one of the greatest investors of all times. His empire, Berkshire Hathaway, is worth $355 billion, an increase of 1,826,163 percent since 1964 when Buffett…

This Simple Note-Taking Method Will Help You Read More (and remember what you’ve read)

Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First, it keeps you awake, not merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks. Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.

The importance of marking a book

Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it— which comes to the same thing— is by writing in it.Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.The book is yours and the only real objective is transferring the knowledge from the author to you.

The book is yours

Reading a Book is a Conversation Between You and the Author

There is a difference between reading for understanding and reading for information. Anything easily digested is reading for information. The regurgitation of facts without solid understanding and context gains you little in the real world. Learning something insightful requires mental work. It’s uncomfortable. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not learning. You need to find writers who are more knowledgeable on a particular subject than yourself.

The Difference Between Reading for Understanding and Reading for Information.

Mortimer Adler literally wrote the book on reading. Adler identifies four levels of reading:<ol><li>Elementary Reading</li><li>Inspectional Reading</li><li>Analytical Reading</li><li>Syntopical Reading</li></ol>They are thought of as levels because you can’t move to a higher level without a firm understanding of the previous one — they are cumulative.

The Four Levels of Reading

Inspectional reading allows us to look at the author’s blueprint. There are two sub-types of inspectional reading:<ul><li>Systematic skimming, this is meant to be a quick check of the book by reading the preface; studying the table of contents; checking the index; and reading the inside jacket.</li><li>Superficial reading, this is when you just read. If you don’t understand something, move on.</li></ul>

Inspectional Reading

There are four rules to Analytical Reading:<ul><li>Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.</li><li>State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.</li><li>Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole.</li><li>Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.</li></ul>

Analytical Reading

Syntopical Reading involves reading many books on the same subject and comparing and contrasting ideas, vocabulary, and arguments.This task is undertaken by identifying relevant passages, translating the terminology, framing and ordering the questions that need answering, defining the issues, and having a conversation with the responses.The goal is not to achieve an overall understanding of any particular book, but rather to understand the subject and develop a deep fluency.

How to Write a Book Summary, Step-by-Step (w/ Templates) - Copywriting Course

How to Remember What You Read

Reading Comprehension Tips - Learning Center

This Simple Note-Taking Method Will Help You Read More (and remember what you’ve read)

Reading a Book is a Conversation Between You and the Author

D. A. Majid