So just started reading my first novel. All going well until second page and get faced with someone’s name. No furigana. Made up of two kanji. First character has 3 different nanori and the second has 5 or 6. How are you supposed to read it?!?!?! Great if you are Japanese and it a common name but damned if you are a poor foreigner 
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Wikipedia might help?
You can use Jisho to look up names as well if you change the setting at the top from ‘all’ to ‘names’.
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What novel, and what’s the name? 
コンビニ人間
菅原さん
すがわら
Lot’s of results when you google it.
I assumed it would be a creative given name, not a family name. Family names are an order of magnitude easier.
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すがわら
One of the more common Japanese surnames, so you get the hang of it.
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ありがとうございました
Yes using Jisho as per post above it came up with that.
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But I was going to say, is it really all that important if you’re reading a book and you can’t pronounce a name immediately? I remember when I was a kid (and thus going through the process of learning to read in English) there were tons of character and place names that I failed to pronounce correctly initially, but it doesn’t impact your ability to understand what’s happening.
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If you’re reading the book for the purpose of studying Japanese, then you kinda want to read everything.
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Yeah, but it’s debatable if any person’s name counts as “Japanese language” within the book. At most, you might be missing a clever pun or something I guess.
If you are trying to learn English and you come across the town name Worcester, Massachusetts, I’m sure you might “want” to be able to read everything, but the chances you’d pronounce it correctly on the first try are low. And it wouldn’t reflect on your understanding of English.
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To expand on this line a bit, @Esceptico, the trick for family names is that if the second kanji is 藤, read the name in on’yomi, but otherwise it’ll almost always be kun’yomi. The exceptions are the names that use nanori - unfortunately, this is one of those, with nanori readings for both kanji.
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I didn’t know this, thanks for mentioning it
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I check names too, even if they might not be important for understanding. This is not about pronouncing it correctly, but more about having a sound for unknown kanji at all. This makes remembering the name a lot easier than just relying on the visual representation.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t try to look them up. But it shouldn’t be particularly distressing in the moment you encounter it. You can safely move past it knowing that you understand what’s happening, and later return to check the pronunciation if you want. It shouldn’t slow you down in reading.
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I don’t mind a slowdown because if I don’t check names immediately they all become XX in my mind and I can’t tell which person XX is which. 
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