Previewing is the “first glimpse” view of the book for reading material. It lets the mind have a sneaky look at the material as a whole and allow you to see if it contains anything of interest that you might need. Does the reading material have what could be good information, is it interesting, is it worth taking the time to read it at all?

Have you ever gone into a bookstore and found the section containing hundreds of books that might interest you at that moment?  You pick up the first book because the colour of the book cover or the wording in the title of the book seemed to interest you.  You look at the back of the book for a condensed summary of what the book is about, then read the precis at the begining of the book.  If it still holds your interest you look at the table of contents if the book has one, or flick through the book looking at the chapter titles.  If the book doesn’t interest you or the typeface is small or the layout of the book doesn’t appeal to you, you place the book back on the shelf and select another one that might interest you.  If you find one that you like, you may read the first few paragraphs of the book section that you are most interested, and then proceed to pay for the book.

What you have done there in the bookstore is a form of previewing exercise.  It sorts the “Wheat from the chaff”, or the interesting from the non interesting. If you didn’t have a method of previewing the books in the bookstore you would have to either buy all of them or leave the bookstore, or maybe just guess at a book and buy it, hoping that it will be the one that interests you and has the information that you want to get from it.

Previewing simply is a process of selection based on smart thinking. Previewing of a book after you have obtained it is a similar process. Here you are going to “research” briefly the structure of the book, take in the menu or table of contents of the book, and read the preface and ending of the book.  Flick through the pages noting the content of the chapters, any pictures and diagrams and how the chapters are arranged.  The mind then knows what is coming up next, and as a diner in a restaurant looks forward to the next course of food after they have ordered it, the mind looks forward to the next nugget of information or story it expects to get from the book.

So what are the steps to Previewing your book?

Scan the front and back or inside panels for summary of book

Read the Table of Contents” or scan the chapter headings

Flick through book looking at the format; diagrams and pictures

Read the Preface of the book

The previewing steps should not take more than a minute or so. The more
you do it, the quicker and more proficient you will be at it. So practice on as many interesting books at you can.  Happy previewing !!!...