Inspecting a book

The ultimate goal of reading is to learn something. Maybe you read a biography to learn about someones life. Or you read a how-to book to learn how to cool. You're learning. Now, for any subject that you may want to learn more about, there is likely more than one book written about that subject. Since you don't have all the time in the world, it's important to be able to identify which books will give you the best bang for your buck.

That's the purpose of inspectional reading - to inspect a book and answer the question of "do I want to engage with this book at a deeper level?". There are multiple "levels" of reading that represent how much engagement you have with the book which are indicated by the types of questions you're asking and answering. Problem is that if you try to engage with every single book as fully as you can, you'll spend a lot of time on books that just may not be worth your time. 

So how do you perform inspectional reading? 

1. Look at the title of the book, the blurb, the authors bio, and the index. The goal is to get a sense of what type of book it is (theoretical? practical?), what it's about, and the sources it draws from. If the book appears to fit the subject you're looking to learn more about or if it interests you, go on to the next step. Otherwise, put the book away. 
2. Now we want to know the basic structure of the book. Look at the table of contents. Read the preface. How are the ideas structured? Is there a logical order? Is it random? Does it seem easy to follow? Often times the Author talks about how they've organized their ideas in the book in the preface. The goal of this step is to show you a rough map of where things are. It's a little map for your journey. There's no need to study it intensively, just glance at it a few times so you know where you are once you start ...
3. Peek at some of the chapters. Read the beginning of chapters, end of chapters. Beginning of paragraphs. Get a sense of what the key ideas are. Then read the last 3 pages of the book (for practical books) to get a sense of how the ideas are all tied together. After completing this step, you should have a basic idea of what the book is about as a whole and in parts and how those parts are organized, and whether you're still interested.
4. Do a superficial reading of the book. This is basically a test run. Don't stop to look up words or ideas you don't grasp. Just make sure you read every sentence. The goal isn't comprehending everything - it's to just finish the book. 

Every step serves the purpose of giving you a clearer sense of what the author is saying and whether or not you're interested in engaging in a conversation with him or her (as deeper levels of reading are essentially conversations between you and the author). Steps 1-3 helps establish the overall structure and the final step of inspection serves to fill it in with the meat of the content which you can later use to identify parts that you need to pay closer attention to (more difficult / interesting parts of the book).