How to Write a Summary or a Book Report

As a teacher, I never thought that I would say this but skimming and scanning can also help you to summarize a book or prepare a book report without reading the book.   You can summarize, or "gut", a well-organized non-fiction book in an hour. You can do the same with a fiction book for book reports. When you are studying or reading information for your job, the skimming technique gives you an understanding of a text so you can triage the text. Triaging texts means categorizing them as 1. useful, 2. possibly useful, and 3. useless. People who skip this phase tend to save too much stuff that they really don't comprehend on the chance that some of it may be useful later. If the text is definitely not useful, you discard it. Someone looking for the history of theaters doesn't need anything with the title "Fed Chairman Raises Discount Rate".  If it is a complete book, look at it like an article.  Read the title, the titles of chapters, look at any pictures, graphs or special text. The first chapter (the same as the first paragraph of an article) is the introduction-what the reading material is going to be about. Read the first chapter and take notes. The book's last chapter or summary, if any, is the same as the last paragraph of an article. Read the last chapter and take notes.  Read the first paragraph and the last paragraph of all the other chapters, taking notes. If you can put the action of the story together and identify all the characters, you are finished. If you still have some doubts,  read the first sentence and last sentence of each paragraph in the chapters, making notes as needed.  Your notes will make a good summary. Later, read your notes to improve retention if you are studying.