How to read a book,by Mortimer Adler

Reading is an active activity, not a passive one. First, inspect a book to understand what its main argument is and how it’s organized. Next, as you read the book, analyze how it develops its arguments. Finally, only after you understand the book, critique the author by agreeing or disagreeing, but always give reasons

To be well-read is not to have read a large quantity of books, but to have a high-quality understanding of good books.

4 Key Questions to Answer while You’re Reading: What is this book about as a whole?The leading theme, and how the author develops the theme.What is being said in detail, and how.The main ideas and assertions.

Any experienced learner knows that she shouldn’t fear rules at the beginning of something new. After mastery, they coalesce and can be done automatically.

Techniques to engage with the book to better absorb it Underline or highlight major points Star the 10 most important statements or passages in the book.Numbers in the margin to indicate a sequence of points to develop an argument

Elementary Reading This is pure mechanical reading of text and comprehension of what the symbols literally mean. This is where most remedial courses aim, and the extent to which reading is taught.

Inspectional Reading This is a skimming of the book to understand its main points and its structure. It aims to gain the best understanding of the book in a limited time. This is achieved by reading the table of contents, index, and key summaries of major chapters.

Analytical Reading This aims to gain the best understanding of the book in unlimited time. Not only should you aim to understand what is being said, you should develop a personal opinion about its validity. This isn’t necessary if your goal is simply information or entertainment

Syntopical Reading This aims to compare books and authors to one another, to model dialogues between authors that may not be in any one of the books.

On speed reading: A helpful component of speed reading is is training your brain not to subvocalize. Exercise: use your hand to cover text, and move your hand downward faster than you can currently read. Your brain will be forced to catch up.

However, after a point, reading faster necessarily trades off with comprehension. When speed reading helps you avoid spending time on texts that don’t deserve your analysis, this is good. But you wouldn’t want to speed read the Declaration of Independence.

More critical than speed reading is being able to modulate your reading speed dynamically. Read certain types of texts (fiction) faster than others (science textbooks). Within a text, read key points more slowly than fluff.

Inspectional Reading The goal is to gain the best understanding of the book in a limited time. Set a target for 15 minutes to comprehend a 300-page book. Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book’s general idea.

The value of inspectional reading appears when you contrast it by breaking a fresh book from page one and reading it to the end. In the latter case, you are trying to understand what a book is about at the same time you are trying to understand it.

Questions to ask yourself What genre does the book fit into? What is the book saying as a whole? What is the structure of the book used to develop the main point?

Typical questions on theoretical topics: Does something exist? What kind of thing is it? What caused it to exist? Under what conditions can it exist? Why does it exist? What are the consequences of its existence? What are its characteristic properties? What are its relations to other things of a

Typical questions on practical topics: What ends should be sought? What means should be chosen to a given end? What things must one do to gain a certain objective, and in what order? Under these conditions, what is the right thing to do, and the wrong thing?

Find What the Book Says Understand the keywords of the author, and what is meant by them. The same word can mean different things to different authors. Different words can mean the same thing for the same author Find the meaning of the word Clues that a word is important:

Find the author’s leading propositions in her most important sentences. The important sentences are the ones that express the judgments on which the argument rests.

Unpack complicated sentences to find all the propositions the author is making. State the proposition in your own words – this is the best way to verify that you understand it. If you can’t do this, the author has merely transferred words to you, not knowledge.

A good book usually summarizes itself as its arguments develop. An orator’s great trick is to leave certain things unsaid that would be challenged if they were made explicit. Find what things the orator says must be assumed, what can be proved, and what need not be proved because it is self-evident.

As much as possible, you should struggle with the book independently on a first pass. This will help you see the forest for the trees, rather than getting mired in minutiae. When you use an external resource, understand 1) what you hope to get from consulting it, 2) the limitations of the resource.

There is no book so good that no fault can be found with it. Reading a book is like a conversation. Your obligation as a reader is to talk back, even though the author isn’t there. We’ve been conditioned to think that teachable students are those who passively swallow knowledge without independent judgment.

Until you’ve completed your understanding, you don’t have the right to say I agree, I disagree, or I suspend judgment. Much like a conversation, you need to give the author the chance to express herself fully before passing judgment. If you interrupted the author at each sentence to say she’s wrong, you’re not having a

Do not be contentious or combative for its own sake. Many see a discussion as something to be won, rather than an opportunity to discover the truth. They close themselves to learning something new or changing their mind.

A disagreement is an opportunity to teach, and an opportunity to be taught.

Do not play devil’s advocate by default. Don’t resent the author for being right or teaching you something new.

Inversely, don’t accept the author’s word as true simply because she seems more educated than you.

Separate your emotional reaction to the book from the rational one. Read the book sympathetically, earnestly trying to take take author’s point of view.

When you agree or disagree, you must give reasons for your disagreement. Without reasons, you’re merely expressing opinions. And fighting opinions with opinions is an endless battle with no victory.

According to How to Read a Book, If you disagree with the author, your criticism must fit into a set of categories: The author is uninformed: lacks knowledge that is relevant to the argument. The author is misinformed: asserts what is not the case; proposes as true/likely what it is false/unlikely.

Practical books What is this book about as a whole? What problems are being addressed? Discover the rules that are being recommended. What is being said in detail, and ho Discover the principles that justify the rules. Find the applications of the

Science What is this book about as a whole? What is being said in detail, and how? Is the book true, in whole or part? What of it? Why is this important? What follows?

Syntopical Reading The ultimate aim is to understand all the conflicting viewpoints relating to a subject.

Create a total bibliography of works that may be relevant to your subject. Many of the important works may not be obvious, e.g. may not have the keyword in their titles.

Inspect all of the books on your bibliography to decide which are relevant to your subject, and to better define the subject. As you research, you may find that your subject is more difficult to define than you imagined. Imagine love, which has been attributed to everything in the universe. Do we speak of love etc

Find the most relevant passages within the bibliography. Read the book quickly. You are reading it for your ultimate purpose, not for its own sake. You may use a syntopicon that organizes passages across works by subject. like Great Works of the Western World.

Bring the authors to terms with each other.Authors in different fields may use entirely different terms that mean the same thing, and the same terms in different fields may mean entirely different things. You must establish the controls and bring order to the chaos. This is in some sense like translation

Frame a set of questions to which most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers. This may not be explicit – you may have to infer that if the author were asked the question, then she would have answered in this way.

Define the issues by ranging the opposing answers of authors. Often differences in answers are due to different conceptions of the question, and different views of the subject.

Order the questions and issues to throw maximum light on the subject. Show how the questions are answered differently and say why. Point to texts that support classification of answers. Generally, order more general questions before less general questions.

Example of the author’s syntopical reading on the subject of progress: Coming to terms: progress is used primarily to indicate change for the better, though a minority referred to is as negative changes. The authors then had to refer to the latter as “non-meliorative advances” rather than progress, thus changing the

The major question is, does progress occur in history? To this the major answers are 1) yes, 2) no, 3) we cannot know.

However, there are quite a few ways of saying each of these. There is also controversy: 1) is progress necessary, or contingent on other occurrences? 2) will progress continue indefinitely? 3) is there progress in human nature as well as in human institutions?

Finally, there are 6 respects in which progress occurs: 1) knowledge, 2) technology, 3) economic, 4) political, 5) moral, 6) in the fine arts.