How to Read a Book

Rating:
Summary: Very good read about reading
Review: A guide to reading for the serious reader. It teaches about the different reading levels and the needed rules to accomplish them. Good book for anyone that wants to master the art of reading, in specific analytical reading of classics and other great books. Not so good for someone looking to learn how to speed read or take in the most information with minimum effort.

Rating:
Summary: Learn How to Learn
Review: In this very useful book, Adler and Van Doren admirably succeed in showing the reader how to become a more able reader. For anyone, student, businessman, or otherwise whose success is dependent upon being able to quickly and thoroughly understand written material, this book will rapidly repay the purchase price and the time invested in reading it.

The authors identify four levels of reading: 1)elementary reading - the ability to pick up a page of printed material and understand the words on it and their grammatical relation to each other; 2)Inspectional reading - the sort of reading one does in the library or bookstore to determine whether a book is worthy of the time to read it thoroughly; 3 - Analytical reading - the most thorough level of reading one can engage in with a single work. It is the level at which one converses with the book in a sense; 4)Syntopical reading - Reading many books about a single subject with the goal of gaining a comprehensive knowledge of it. The authors make the point that all books aren't worthy of the same level of reading. The authors don't have a problem with casually reading a novel for enjoyment, but that isn't the sort of reading this book describes. This book is a guide to the process of reading to learn and grow.

The elementary level is only briefly described. After all, in order to make any use of this book, it is necessary that one first have the skills to read it. The chapter on inspectional reading may prove to be the most useful to many readers. Many students do not seem to have much skill in finding appropriate books for research, or they waste a lot of time on a book only to find out that it really is not helpful for their purposes. Many practical suggestions are offered to remedy this problem. The value of inspectional reading goes beyond this, however. Adler correctly notes that the teaching of literature in high school is particularly prone to destroying any comprehension or delight in the works studied by attempting to move to an analytic approach to the work without first getting the big picture to provide context.

The bulk of the work is devoted to analytic reading. They divide this type of reading into three stages and offer four or so rules for each stage. In going through this process, the student should become thoroughly acquainted with what the book is about (what type of book it is, what problems it is trying to solve, etc.), understand what the propositions are that the author offers to solve his problem and how those are supported, and finally, be able to offer an informed critique of whether the author failed or succeeded in his attempt.

Having described how analytical reading works in relation to expository works, the authors then devote 100 pages to explaining how the rules must be expanded or modified when dealing with specific types of literature such as history, fiction, or philosophy.

Syntopical reading is covered in only one chapter. It is essentially an analytical reading of works or portions of works that pertain to a matter of interest. The rules and guidelines offered in that section are those that relate specifically to finding the right works, and then understanding when they are addressing the same matter (a subject sometimes made difficult by differences in terminology).

The book is well organised and very easy to read. Anyone already capable of reading at the elementary level should be able to begin making use of the material in each chapter as soon as they have read it. This book would be an excellent gift for anyone graduating high school and preparing to go on to college.

Rating:
Summary: Challenging
Review: This book was challenging. I have been an active reader for several years, but now I realize that I have not been reading to my full potential. First, I have learned that the books I read are not challenging enough for me. The author of this book writes that if a book is not 'over your head' you will not learn anything from it. Books that are hard for us to understand are the books that change our minds, make us grow. I tend to shy away from these types of books. Second, I learned how to read analytically. The method is simple, but time consuming. You must spend lots of time and effort to read a book analytically.

This is a great book for anyone who wants to harvest more from the books they read. The author writes, "Reading well, which means reading actively, is thus not only a good in itself, nor is it merely a means to advancement in our work or career. It also serves to keep our minds alive and growing."

Rating:
Summary: So you THINK you know how to read a book...
Review: Of course, probably all of us who browse the book section of this website know how to read a book. But do you know how to read to get the most benefit out of a good book, a book that is "above your head", that stretches your mind, that introduces you to unfamiliar concepts? "How to Read a Book" presents four kinds of reading, but spends most of its pages discussing "analytical" reading. There is a lot to analytical reading, and casual readers probably won't want to make the effort. Those serious about reading, however, will benefit from using the concepts presented here. The book talks about how to read different types of books, both fiction and non-fiction. Then it moves to a brief discussion of "syntopical" reading, which is basically the type of reading necessary for researchers and college students attempting to write a paper. This is a very valuable book, but I had to dock it one star for a little too much subtle advertising for the well-known set of books the authors have assembled.

Rating:
Summary: Can dramatically improve your ability to learn
Review: This is a great book. This book can make a big improvement in how effective you are in reading. It mostly focuses on how to master a book. It talks about various levels of reading, but mainly the book is trying to help the reader to completely understand and own a book after reading it.
A reader or listener is like a catcher in a baseball game, it takes both the effort of the pitcher (author) and the effort of the catcher (reader) to transmit an idea. In reading only in part, only part of the idea may be caught.
The goals of reading: reading for information, reading for understanding. To gain understanding you have to work on the book. Reading for understanding is aided discovery.
The authors point how that there are different levels of reading:

1) Basic reading (See Spot run)
2) Reading with a limit on time, systematic skimming.
3) Reading for maximum understanding, or unlimited time
4) Reading several books, synoptically, this is the ability to do research from several books.

So in reading a book you need to decide what it is you want out of the book. For example you may decided after skimming the book that you are not interested in reading any more. "HOW TO READ A BOOK" gives tips on making that decision, and then how to do a good job of reading at a given level.
The authors give tips on how to skim a book, to check the title page, the table of contents, look through the index, and read the publishers jacket. At some point along the way you may decide you are no longer interested in the book. Next you figure out which chapters are important to the book, read them, and read the summary arguments of the book.
Much of the book is on the third level, where you try to own or master a book, so but the time you are done with the book you have increased your understanding of a topic.
The essence of active reading, trying to answer four basic questions:
1) What is the Book about as a whole?
2) What is being said in detail, and how?
3) Is the Book true, in whole or in part?
4) What of it? What does it mean to me?
There are several suggestions on how to mark up a book, so that when you come back to it later you can quickly remember the key points, and use it as a reference book. And marking up the book helps you to process the material at a deeper level.
This is well worth reading, and reading several times, until you own the book.

Rating:
Summary: Higher literacy
Review: Imagine me - there I was, for decades of my life, thinking I knew how to read a book. I'd advanced through elementary school and prep, into college and finally to graduate school when I discovered, to my horror, that I in fact did not know how to read! Perhaps that helps to explain my affinity to literacy programmes, with whom I will begin working again come this Wednesday.

But no, perhaps I overstate the situation. What I actually mean to say is that it was not until my graduate school days that I happened across the most excellent work How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. This staple had somehow eluded me; familiar as I was with both Adler and Van Doren, I had never encountered this text.

This book was written in 1940, as World War II was beginning and the Great Depression ending; it was revised in the 60s and again in 70s, with the assistance of Charles Van Doren, another person who had had some difficult dealings with Columbia, due to his involvement in the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. Van Doren moved away from the East Coast and landed in Chicago, near Adler, at Britannica, also again near Adler, and has the kind of intellect and unconventional circumstance that Adler admired. Adler of course had his own unique academic career, failing to get an undergraduate degree due to a physical education requirement that went unmet.

The book itself is divided into four main sections with two sizeable appendices.

The Dimensions of Reading
In this section, the authors look as types of reading and reading levels. They look at basic goals for reading, and discuss different types of learning. While they do not get into the theoretical complexities of learning styles as intricately as more recent educational theorists, they do make interesting and insightful distinctions between learning by instruction and learning by discovery.

This section is, in fact, full of rules. Rules for notetaking, annotating (highlighting, underlining, summarising, etc.), skimming, comprehending, etc. are all presented in an almost overwhelming sequence. There is so much to remember while reading (and I remember how smug I felt at having discovered many, if not most, of the rules on my own). But the authors beg for the rules to be consistently applied so that they merge together to become simple habit. They use the analogy of learning to ski - the rules are important, each in and of itself, but successful skiing transcends a mere application of rules until they become a natural impulse. So it is with reading.

Analytical Reading
This is crucial for true benefit and comprehension of any book. The authors talk about analysis in stages:

o Pigeonholing a book
o X-raying a book
o Coming to terms with an author
o Determining an author's message
o Criticising a book fairly
o Agreeing or disagreeing with an author
o Aids to reading

Approaches to Different Kinds of Reading Matter
In this section, the authors look at critical differences between different styles of books. It is obvious to even the inexperienced reader that reading a technical manual is vastly different from reading plays, poems, or history texts. Even the most educated of people occasionally stumble when confronted with high-level material from outside fields, such as asking the social scientist to deal with mathematical and scientific texts, or asking the physicist to deal with history and psychology treatises. One might argue about their divisions, but within the chapters they cover a very broad area.

The Ultimate Goals of Reading
Why does anyone read in the first place? Here the authors talk about developing beyond individual books into fields of learning, introducing ideas of synoptic reading and understanding the importance for doing so. Again charting rules of engagement for multiple texts, the authors discuss the importance of reading for understanding and deeper comprehension.

* * *

The first appendix consists of a lengthy list of the great books identified by Adler, modified over time by the various people involved in great books curriculum development. This is an admittedly Western-dominated list.
The list is certainly a long one. There are 137 authors, often with several works attached, recommended in this list. One can find this list in physical form in the Great Books series that is a companion to the Britannica. Itself only recently updated and revised, it consists of several linear feet of bookshelves, and even their recommended 10-year plan is ambition and doesn't cover the entirety of the series. The list is presented (as the book set is organized) in chronological order; this is not the best order in which to read the works.

The second appendix is actually a series of reading exercises for self-examination or group consideration. These are designed to be used for different levels of readers and different intentions. The authors tackle the question of arbitrary and cultural bias in manners of testing, coming to the pragmatic conclusion that, so long as academic and society advancement is tied to these kinds of testing and evaluations, it makes sense to learn how to do them, and however biased they may be in form or content, they still do provide a good measure, if not the best possible measure, for reading comprehension and retention.

One can tell that one's book has been successful when parody versions begin to appear. The year after the first edition of How to Read a Book appeared, there was the spoof How to Read Two Books; shortly thereafter there was a serious monograph by a Professor I.A. Richards entitled How to Read a Page.

Happy reading!

Rating:
Summary: Still perfect after all these years...
Review: I first read this book when I was in Junior High School. During the intervening 40 years I have carried it from place to place in my library without giving it a second thought. On a whim I picked it up last week and decided to see what was there.

Wow! I'm sorry I didn't get more out of it when I was young. Fortunately much of what Mr. Adler writes is what I have discovered about reading, but I never articulated it. And now that he has, I can approach reading in a much more methodical way.

I was startled to discover that there is now a new edition with Charles Van Doren listed as the first author. I am hard-pressed to imagine what he might have done to improve upon the perfection of the original. It is very entertainingly written with a very personal flavor that I really appreciate.

I found it either discouraging or encouraging to read his diatribe against the American education system, realizing that he wrote it in 1939.

(My copy was printed in 1960.)

Rating:
Summary: Read this book before reading any others
Review: In reading a book, it is important to differentiate between the three levels: entertainment, information and understanding. Gathering facts is not the same as gaining insight. Learning is not the same as discovery. There are four types of reading, each building on the previous: elementary, inspectional, analytical and syntopical. Elementary reading is reading as a child. Inspectional reading includes: title page, preface, table of contents, index, publisher's notes and pivotal chapters. Dip in here and there and read the last few pages. This process should take no more than one hour. This is most important for expository works. Even a difficult book should be read through without stopping. Remember speed-reading is actually variable speeds of reading as appropriate to the book in hand. The four basic questions are, 1: what is the book about as a whole? 2: what is being said in detail and how? 3:Is the book true in whole or part? 4: what of it-significance? The first four rules of analytical reading are: 1:classify the book, 2: find the unity, a single short statement that captures it's essence. 3: analyze the parts of the book. 4:determine the problems the author is trying to solve. The next four rules are: 5: come to terms with the author through key words and phrases. Important words help to increase understanding enormously. The approach is both top down and bottom up. 6: find the most important sentences and discover their propositions. 7: locate the basic argument of the book from the key sentences. Restate this in your own words to confirm your understanding. 8; find the authors solutions. If a book is over your head it is an opportunity to increase your knowledge. The last 4 rules concern criticism. 9: you must be able to understand before you can criticize. 10: when you disagree do so reasonably. 11: respect the difference between knowledge and opinion. Read other criticisms only after you have read the book, this can be very pleasurable. 12; show where the author is uninformed, misinformed, illogical or incomplete. The three sets of rules of analytical reading are therefore: structural, interpretive and critical. Degree of difficulty x size of audience=constant appears to be a rule. Great comment on Plato: wherever I go in my mind I meet Plato coming back. Syntopical reading involves creating a tentative bibliography, reading all the books inspectionally. Short-list the relevant books. Bring the authors to common terms. Establish a set of neutral propositions. Define the issues and analysis to throw maximum light on the subject. Ask questions as a child would and try to answer them. There is no limit to the amount of growth and development that the mind can sustain. Bibliography could do with bringing up to date from 1970 when to revision was written.

Rating:
Summary: Habits changed for the better
Review: To keep it short and simple, this book has REALLY helped me to focus my thoughts and questions when reading a book. It's all common sense stuff, but maybe it takes being written down in a well-organized book to really penetrate the minds of people like me. Those who know what they should do, but are naturally lazy.. As noted in the book(pg.338-339), some books do deserve the effort of all the suggestions Adler and Van Doren make while others can be spared the extensive analysis. But this piece gives you a good place to start and is just as handy to keep around as other reference materials. I also highly recommend Adler's companion piece, "How to Speak, How to Listen."

Rating:
Summary: Excellent guide to better reading
Review: With all the great controversy going in Grammar Schools on how to read books, one thing is still clear: most students can't read that well. Teacher often leave that big job on the shoulders of students to acquire all the subtle facets of reading.

Today's educators still place the responsibility of acquring expertise in reading on students and yet they never give them good text guides to help them gain those skills in good reading.

And since most technical writers can't write clearly because they often begin assuming everybody can read their minds, this book even helps this large group of people dispersed among the rest of us in society.

So this simply and direct book now becomes a must read for all High School or College students who need to know once and for all the basics skills for reading a wide variety of material they will face in their lifetime.

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