For books, I often use a very basic technique taught by my HS history teacher: - Read the first and last paragraphs of every chapter. - Read the first and last

For books, I often use a very basic technique taught by my HS history teacher: - Read the first and last paragraphs of every chapter. - Read the first and last sentences of every paragraph. This obviously doesn't work for novels or dense technical reading, but it is very effective otherwise.