Inspectional reading is the second of the [The four levels of reading](The%20four%20levels%20of%20reading.md). It is the best technic for ones who have limited time but want a great level of understanding. It englobes multiple kind of technics such as: systematic skimming, surface, selective and selective reading. As the name suggest, it's about inspecting a book in order to find valuable information, decide to buy it between other books, or to prepare an analytical reading. We should always start non-fiction book with an inspectional reading phase, because it will create a mental image of the book and will help to better remember the concepts in it, thanks to space repetition and improve the [Speed reading](Speed%20reading.md). Though, it isn't only a matter of reading things faster, but also reading selectively fewer things. The first phase of inspectional reading is the systematic skimming: - Carefuly read the title to understand what the book is about - Same for the sub-title - Read the preface, selectively avoiding marketing to get [The Why](The%20Why.md) instead - Check the index and the reference page in search of an author you know and maybe quote - Take a look at pivotal arguments chapter, and search for their summary, often at the end or the beginning - Parse chapters here and there, reading some parts and even consecutive pages. This allows having clear vision of where to go, what are the subjects and the book about. Inspectional technic should also be the prefered way of [Re-reading books](Re-reading%20books.md). We should also rapidly define the author's problem, and the questions he's about to answer toward the book. In complement of the [Book evaluation](Evaluate%20a%20book.md), we need to have these 4 rules as the underlying structure of the next phase, the analytical reading: - Classify the book - State the whole book shortly - Outline the parts and their dynamic - Define the problems the author is trying to solve