Notes taken from reading How To Read a Book by Mortimer Adler.
"Knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We don't have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of our understanding." - p.4
"Reading is a complex activity that consists of several acts, all of which must be performed to be 'good reading'."
Levels of Reading
- Elementary - "what does the sentence say?"
- Inspectional - systematic skimming or pre-reading --> aim = get the most out of a book in a specific amount of time
- here, we examine the surface of the book, ex:
- "what is the book about?"
- "what is the book's structure?"
- "what are its parts?"
- here, we examine the surface of the book, ex:
- Analytical - a complete read, the best you can do given unlimited time to read something. intensely active, at this level, the reader grasps a book and works at it until the book becomes his own.
- "Some books are to be tasted, others are to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested" - Francis Bacon
- Syntopic - reading multiple books on a topic at the same time and drawing new material from connections made, constructing analyses on a subject that may not be in any of the books they've read on the subject.
Level 2: Inspectional Reading
- determine whether the book requires a more careful reading, should you even read this?
"Giving a book this kind of quick once-over is a threshing process that helps you separate the chaff from the real kernels of nourishment"
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read title and preface
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**study table of contents **- get a general sense of book's structure - you'd check a map before starting a trip, so here's your map.
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check the index - make a quick estimate of the range of topics covered via the authors and books that are being referred to. when some term listed seems crucial, look up at least some of the passages cited. This may contain the crux of the book itself or the new departure which is key to the author's approach/attitude.
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read the publisher's blurb - was made by author + marketing team to get main points across ASAP ^ At this point you might realize you don't even wanna go further. thats ok.
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from your general/vague knowledge of the book, look at the chapters that seem pivotal to its argument
- if these chapters have summary statements in opening/closing pages, read these statements carefully
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turn the pages, dipping in here/there, reading a paragraph or two, sometimes several pages in sequence, but nothing else
- thumb through the book like this ^, always looking for signs of the main contention, listening for the basic pulse of the matter.
- above all, read the last 2-3 pages of the book. Summaries lie here. ^ should take a few mins-1hour.
"Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book's general theme/idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer."
- READ THROUGH THE WHOLE THING THE FIRST TIME WITHOUT STOPPING!
"Everyone has had the experience of struggling fruitlessly with a difficult book that was begun with high hopes of enlightenment. It is natural enough to conclude that it was mistake to try to read it in the first place. But that was not the mistake. Rather it was in expecting too much from the first going over of a difficult book. Approached in the right way, no book intended for the general reader, no matter how difficult, need be a cause for despair."
"Many books are hardly worth even skimming; some should be read quickly; and a few should be read at a rate, usually quite slow, that allows for complete comprehension."
"With regard to rates of reading, the ideal is not merely to be able to read faster, but to be able to read at different speeds --and to know when the different speeds are appropriate. Inspection reading is accomplished quickly, but that is not only because you read faster, although in fact you do; it is also because you read less of a book when you give it an inspectional reading, and because you read it in a different way, with different goals in mind. Analytical reading is ordinarily much slower than inspectional reading, but even when you are giving a book an analytical reading, you should not read all of it at the same rate of speed. Every book, no matter how difficult, contains interstitial material that can be and should be read quickly; and every good book also contains matter that is difficult and should be read very slowly."
speed reading = reducing eye fixations
"Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves , and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension."
Level 3: Analytical reading
"Every book has a skeleton hidden between its covers. Your job as an analytical reader is to find it.""Recognition of the need to see the structure of a book leads to the discovery of the 2nd and 3rd rules for reading any book."
~~Rule 1: Know what kind of book you're reading and know this as early in the process (preferably before you read it)
Rule 2: State the UNITY of the whole book in a single sentence or a short paragraph.
"In proportion as it is good, as a book and as a work of art, it has a more nearly perforect, a more pervasive UNITY. This is true of music and paintings, of novels and plays; it is no less true of books that convey knowledge"
^ Books are works of art too, and works of art have structure, harmony and variety --- UNITY. you need to understand that unity to describe it SUCCINTLY.
**Rule 3: set forth the major parts of the book and show how these are organized into a whole, by being ordered to one another and the unity of the whole. **
"You have not grasped a complex unity if all you know about is how it is one. You must also know how it is many, not a many that consists of a lot of separate things but an organized many." ^ the diff. b/w a heap of bricks and a house
"A good book, like a good house, is an orderly arrangement of parts."
"As houses are more or less livable, so books are more of less readable. The most readable book is an architectural achievement on the part of the author. The best books are those that have the most intelligible structure. Though they are usually more complex than poorer books, their greater complexity is also a greater simplicity, because their parts are better organized, more unified. ....That is one of the reasons why the best books are also the most readable." p.77
"After you know the plot [of a book]...and through it, the unity of the whole narrative, you can put the parts into their proper places. "
"Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. That, indeed, is the plot of every romance. To recogniaze this is to learn what it means to say that there are only a small number of plots in the world. The difference b/w good and bad stories having the same essential plot lies in what the author does with it, how he dresses up the bare bones."
"Dont be too proud to accept the author's help [in understanding the plot] if he offers it, but dont rely too completely on what he says. in the preface either. The best-laid plans of authors often go awry. The obligation of finding the unity always lands on the reader"
^ One thing I really like about this book so far is the emphasis on making up your own mind rather than accepting the author as end-all-be-all.
Wealth of Nations - maybe read one day. Check p.81 for a great unity example on it.
after understanding the unity, you need to understand the individual parts that make it up and how the author devises it.
You could write this out in full detail, ex:"This unity X is express by the author's first point A which builds into point B by stating that..." but realistically not all books deserve this level of scrutiny and its up to you to figure out the degree of fidelity re: outlining.
_"Even when you become more skilled, you wont want to read a book w the same degree of effort. You wont find it profitable to expend all your skill on some books. Even the best readers try to make an approximation to the requirements of this rule for only a relatively few books. For the most part, they're satisfied with a rough notion of a book's structure." _p84
"No book deserves a perfect outline bc no book is perfect. It only goes so far, and so should you."
In making an outline, you dont need to follow the author's structure (i.e. chapter divisions), make your own.
"The author made his [outline] in order to write a good book. You must make yours in order to read it well." p89
"Surface can be deceiving. You must look beneath it to find the real structure."
"The reader tries to uncover the skeleton the book conceals. The author starts w the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if flabbiness avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts of will reveal the articulation." p.90
OK so why not just give me the outline?
"The flesh of a book is as much a part of it as the skeleton. This is as true of book as of people. The flesh--outline spelled out, 'read out', adds an essential dimension. It adds life, in the case of the animal. Just so, actually writing out the book from an outline, no matter how detailed, gives the work a kind of life that it otherwise wouldn't have"
Rule 4: Find out what the author's problems were. - the author starts with a single or series of questions
- Classify the book according to its kind and subject matter
- State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity
- Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts are you've outlined the whole
- Define the problem(s) the author is trying to solve.
"A term is not a word--at least, not just a word without further qualifications" p.96
A term is a word used unambiguously. Language can be a problem, we have to iron out what the important words are in a book and SPECIFICALLY what they mean.
Rule 5: Find the important words and through them come to terms with the author ^ Note: this has 2 parts.
^ We can go super deep here, but at a high level, this is it.
"You may never wish to go further [in coming to terms and ironing out meaning from words]. But even if you don't, you'll find that your comprehension of any book will be enormously increased if you only go through the trouble of finding its important words, identifying their shifting meanings, and coming to terms. Seldom does such a small change in habit have such a large effect." p112
"Generally, the order of reading reverses the order of business. Businessmen usually come to terms after they find out what the proposition is. But the reader must usually come to terms with an author first, before he can find out what the author is proposing, what judgement he's declaring."
Rule 6: Mark the most important sentence in a book and discover the propositions they contain.
Often, they're by the most important words.
"From the author's POV, the important sentences are the ones that express the judgements on which his whole argument rests." p.120
"Perhaps you are beginning to see how essential a part of reading it is to be perplexed and know it. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess." p.121
Rule 7: Locate or construct the basic arguments in the book by finding them in the connections of sentences.
^ see: "sentences" rather than paragraphs. Sometimes the basic arguments aren't all in one nice chunk, and you, the reader, have to construct them yourself through a series of important sentences the author gives and you interpret.
Rule 8: Find out what the author's solutions are. ^ here, state what the author has found as the solutions to the arguments they've mentioned...and this is finally your chance to speak, to state whether or not the solutions are valid and to what degree.
- come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words
- grasp the author's leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences
- know the author's arguments (by finding them or constructing them from sequences of sentences)
- Determine which of his problems the author has solved, which he hasnt, and which the author knew he has failed to solve.
"these rules of analytical reading describe an ideal performance. Few have ever read any book in this manner, and those who have, probably read very few books this way. The ideal remains, however, the measure of achievement. You're a good reader to the degree in which you approximate it."
"A person who has read widely but not well deserves to be pitied, not praised. As Thomas Hobbes said, 'If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.'"
The great writers have always been great readers, but they typically read less than whats on a standard college curriculum. What they did read, they read well.
How to be a demanding reader
one simple prescription for active reading = ask questions while you read --questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading
the essence of active reading - 4 questions a reader asks:
- "what is the book about as a whole?" - whats the theme and how does the author develop it
- "what's being said in detail, and how?" - try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author's particular message
- "Is the book true, in whole or part?" - you cant answer this until you've understood the 1st two questions. Once you understand a book, if you're serious about reading, you are obligated to make up your own mind...knowing the author's mind is not enough.
- "What of it?" - why is any of this significant?
^ These summarize the entire obligation of the reader!
_"Reading beyond the elementary level is essentially an effort on your part to ask it questions (and to answer them as good as you can). That's why there's all the difference in the world between a demanding and undemanding reader. The latter asks no questions--and gets no answers." _p.47
Knowing these questions isnt enough, you have to build the habit of asking them as you read, answering precisely and accurately. The trained ability to do so is the art of reading.
How to make a book your own
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physically mark it up - margin notes, underlines
- numbers in margin - to indicate a sequence of points made by author in developing argument
- numbers of other pages in margin - indicate where else in the book the author makes those same points or denote areas of contradiction -- this could also be useful to tie together ideas that are in diff areas of the book.
- "Cf" - 'compare' symbol
- star or asterisk - used sparingly, to denote the 10-12 most important passages in the book
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buying a book is like buying clothes, just purchasing is actually only a prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full ownership only comes when you've made it a part of yourself --> by writing in it.
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Marking up a book keeps you wide awake
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writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author
"Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author...its a 2 way operation, the learner has to question himself and the teacher. He even has to be willing to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying. Marking a book is the highest respect you can pay an author."
what kind you'll make depends on the level you're reading.
- inspectional - 'what kinda book is it?', 'what is it about as a whole?', 'what's the structural order of the work where the author develops his understanding of the subject matter?'
- make these notes on the table of contents or title page ^ These notes primarily concern the structure of the book, not substance.
- analytical - conceptual note-making i.e. finding truth and significance to what author is saying.
- syntopic - making notes about the "shape of the discussion" between diff. books (i.e. "dialectical" notes)
This is a completely new way of approaching reading, and there's rules to it, structure.
"Being an artist consists of operating according to rules "