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How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (Paperback) (Paperback)
by Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren
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| MSL Pointer Review:
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested" (Francis Bacon). This is one of those books. |
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Author: Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren
Publisher: Touchstone
Pub. in: August, 1972
ISBN: 0671212095
Pages: 426
Measurements: 8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01033
Other information: Revised edition
ISBN-13: 978-0671212094
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- MSL Picks -
How to Read a Book clearly explains the four levels of reading a book. These are elementary, inspectional, analytical and syntopical. The authors teach that each reading level builds on the previous one. It was shown that the ability to read at the inspectional, analytical and syntopical levels were required to review a book or research paper effectively. It is clear that learning to read actively and effectively is a complex skill that requires careful and detailed study.
The authors of How to Read a Book, Mortimer J Adler and Charles Van Doren, clearly and methodically delineate the four levels of reading, namely elementary, inspectional, analytical and syntopical. The authors explain how each level builds on the previous one. The authors have a deep understanding of a wide range of subjects. They presented propositions and arguments in a logical, thorough and convincing manner. This is reflected in their ability to simplify the subject whilst capturing its essence in a simple, easy to follow and understandable style.
How to Read a Book is divided into four parts. The first part teaches the distinction between the four levels of reading. In this section there is a detailed discussion of the first two levels of reading, namely elementary and inspectional. The second part focuses on the third level of reading, namely analytical. The rules of analytical reading are carefully explained. The three stages of analytical reading comprise the rules for finding what a book is about, interpreting a book's contents and criticising a book as a communication of knowledge.
Part three is an exposition of the different ways to approach different kinds of reading materials which include practical and theoretical books, imaginative literature, history, science, mathematics, social science and philosophy. Part four of the book focuses on the ultimate goal of reading, that is, syntopical reading. It teaches how to achieve a goal of lifetime reading.
This book is a must read for anyone who is serious about his/her reading. The authors offer some perceptive tips, suggestions and ideas that are aimed at helping the average person imporve his/her reading skill. This is a book for graduate students who need the best 'how to' techniques to help them get the most out of their reading. This is also a book for the serious reader who is not content with turning page after page - going through the mechanical motions of reading. This is a book for anyone who believes that reading a book is a small life-changing exercise.
Target readers:
General readers.
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- Better with -
Better with
Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction
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How to Read a Book, originally published in 1940, has become a rare phenomenon, a living classic. It is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader. And now it has been completely rewritten and updated.
You are told about the various levels of reading and how to achieve them -- from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading, you learn how to pigeonhole a book, X-ray it, extract the author's message, criticize. You are taught the different reading techniques for reading practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science.
Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests whereby you can measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension and speed.
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Chapter 1
THE ACTIVITY AND ART OF READING
This is a book for readers and for those who wish to become readers. Particularly, it is for readers of books. Even more particularly, it is for those whose main purpose in reading books is to gain increased understanding.
By "readers" we mean people who are still accustomed, as almost every literate and intelligent person used to be, to gain a large share of their information about and their understanding of the world from the written word. Not all of it, of course; even in the days before radio and television, a certain amount of information and understanding was acquired through spoken words and through observation. But for intelligent and curious people that was never enough. They knew that they had to read too, and they did read.
There is some feeling nowadays that reading is not as necessary as it once was. Radio and especially television have taken over many of the functions once served by print, just as photography has taken over functions once served by painting and other graphic arts. Admittedly, television serves some of these functions extremely well; the visual communication of news events, for example, has enormous impact. The ability of radio to give us information while we are engaged in doing other things - for instance, driving a caris remarkable, and a great saving of time. But it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world in which we live.
Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good. But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed. We do not 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 understanding.
One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements - all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics - to make it easy for him to "make up his own mind" with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and "plays back" the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.
Active Reading
As we said at the beginning, we will be principally concerned in these pages with the development of skill in reading books; but the rules of reading that, if followed and practiced, develop such skill can be applied also to printed material in general, to any type of reading matter - to newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, articles, tracts, even advertisements.
Since reading of any sort is an activity, all reading must to some degree be active. Completely passive reading is impossible; we cannot read with our eyes immobilized and our minds asleep. Hence when we contrast active with passive reading, our purpose is, first, to call attention to the fact that reading can be more or less active, and second, to point out that the more active the reading the better. One reader is better than another in proportion as he is capable of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort. He is better if he demands more of himself and of the text before him.
Though, strictly speaking, there can be no absolutely passive reading, many people think that, as compared with writing and speaking, which are obviously active undertakings, reading and listening are entirely passive. The writer or speaker must put out some effort, but no work need be done by the reader or listener. Reading and listening are thought of as receiving communication from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. The mistake here is to suppose that receiving communication is like receiving a blow or a legacy or a judgment from the court. On the contrary, the reader or listener is much more like the catcher in a game of baseball.
Catching the ball is just as much an activity as pitching or hitting it. The pitcher or batter is the sender in the sense that his activity initiates the motion of the ball. The catcher or fielder is the receiver in the sense that his activity terminates it. Both are active, though the activities are different. If anything is passive, it is the ball. It is the inert thing that is put in motion or stopped, whereas the players are active, moving to pitch, hit, or catch. The analogy with writing and reading is almost perfect. The thing that is written and read, like the ball, is the passive object common to the two activities that begin and terminate the process.
We can take this analogy a step further. The art of catching is the skill of catching every kind of pitch - fast bails and curves, changeups and knucklers. Similarly, the art of reading is the skill of catching every sort of communication as well as possible.
It is noteworthy that the pitcher and catcher are successful only to the extent that they cooperate. The relation of writer and reader is similar. The writer isn't trying not to be caught, although it sometimes seems so. Successful communication occurs in any case where what the writer wanted to have received finds its way into the reader's possession. The writer's skill and the reader's skill converge upon a common end.
Admittedly, writers vary, just as pitchers do. Some writers have excellent "control"; they know exactly what they want to convey, and they convey it precisely and accurately. Other things being equal, they are easier to "catch" than a "wild" writer without "control."
There is one respect in which the analogy breaks down. The ball is a simple unit. It is either completely caught or not. A piece of writing, however, is a complex object. It can be received more or less completely, all the way from very little of what the writer intended to the whole of it. The amount the reader "catches" will usually depend on the amount of activity he puts into the process, as well as upon the skill with which he executes the different mental acts involved.
What does active reading entail? We will return to this question many times in this book. For the moment, it suffices to say that, given the same thing to read, one person reads it better than another, first, by reading it more actively, and second, by performing each of the acts involved more skillfully. These two things are related. Reading is a complex activity, just as writing is. It consists of a large number of separate acts, all of which must be performed in a good reading. The person who can perform more of them is better able to read.
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The Goals of Reading:
Reading for Information and Reading for Understanding
You have a mind. Now let us suppose that you also have a book that you want to read. The book consists of language written by someone for the sake of communicating something to you. Your success in reading it is determined by the extent to which you receive everything the writer intended to communicate.
That, of course, is too simple. The reason is that there are two possible relations between your mind and the book, not just one. These two relations are exemplified by two different experiences that you can have in reading your book.
There is the book; and here is your mind. As you go through the pages, either you understand perfectly everything the author has to say or you do not. If you do, you may have gained information, but you could not have increased your understanding. If the book is completely intelligible to you from start to finish, then the author and you are as two minds in the same mold. The symbols on the page merely express the common understanding you had before you met.
Let us take our second alternative. You do not understand the book perfectly. Let us even assume -- what unhappily is not always true - that you understand enough to know that you do not understand it all. You know the book has more to say than you understand and hence that it contains something that can increase your understanding.
What do you do then? You can take the book to someone else who, you think, can read better than you, and have him explain the parts that trouble you. ("He" may be a living person or another book - a commentary or textbook. ) Or you may decide that what is over your head is not worth bothering about, that you understand enough. In either case, you are not doing the job of reading that the book requires.
That is done in only one way. Without external help of any sort, you go to work on the book. With nothing but the power of your own mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more. Such elevation, accomplished by the mind working on a book, is highly skilled reading, the kind of reading that a book which challenges your understanding deserves.
Thus we can roughly define what we mean by the art of reading as follows: the process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside, elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The skilled operations that cause this to happen are the various acts that constitute the art of reading.
To pass from understanding less to understanding more by your own intellectual effort in ...
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The New Yorker (MSL quote), USA
<2007-07-04 00:00>
It shows concretely how the serious work of proper reading may be accomplished and how much it may yield in the way of instruction and delight.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-07-04 00:00>
1.1 Résumé of the book
"How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading", is a practical guide for self-improvement that teach us the rules of reading any material, but especially analytical writing. They can be applied to reading the Great Books (primary knowledge) for understanding and pleasure but mainly to learn by reading the Great Books of the Western World.
1.2 The different types of reading
* Reading for information
We have gained more facts but we have learned nothing.
This method is used to read newspapers, magazines or anything that we understand totally by reading it once.
* Reading for learning (for understanding more)
Reading to understand more is to close the gap between the superiority of the author and the reader by learning through communication with the author.
* Reading for enjoyment
This type of reading is the most common, as it is used to read fiction and other books for pleasure.
1.3 The three different reading levels
* Level one - Elementary reading
The first level covers the basic reading skills we learn in the first years of school; we recognize words but do not necessarily understand them.
* Level two - Inspectional reading (preparation for Analytical and Syntopical reading)
The level two skills are based on two steps named skimming (or pre-reading) and superficial reading.
The different steps of skimming, which should take at least one hour for a book, are:
o Look at the title and preface
o Study the table of contents and understand the structure of the book
o Check the index (to learn the most important words and where the important paragraphs are)
o Read the publisher's blurb
o Look now at the main chapters (or the summaries) and read them carefully
o Finally turn the pages and dip in here and there, reading some paragraphs or some pages in sequence
The step of superficial reading is:
o Read a difficult book through without stopping to read footnotes, comments and references. Do not even consult a dictionary (except for a brand new word that seems very important for the author) or encyclopedia
* Level three - analytical reading (how to read a whole book well)
Analytical reading is defined by Adler himself as: "With nothing else but the power of your mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from the state of understanding less to one of understanding more."
Analytical reading is the method, which is explained in detail. For Adler, it is the most important level for learning by reading, especially by reading the Great Books.
Analytical reading is split into three stages.
Stage 1 or the first reading (finding out what the book is about, based on structural rules)
o Pigeonholing a book
* Classify the book
o X-raying the book
* State what the whole book is about
* Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation and outline those parts
* Define the problems the author has tried to solve
Stage 2 or second reading (rules of interpreting)
o Coming to terms with an author
* Come to terms in interpreting the key words
o Determining an author's message
* Grasp the author's leading propositions by dealing with his/her important sentences
* Know the author's arguments by finding them or constructing them out of sequences of sentences (stated in your own words)
* Determine which of the problems the author has solved, and which he had failed to solve or ignored
Stage 3 or third reading (rules for criticizing)
o Answer to the author based on the rules of intellectual etiquette
* Do not say `I agree, disagree or suspend my judgment' until you can say `I understand'
* Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously
* Base your critical judgment on knowledge and not on personal opinion, and give reasons
o Show how the author is uninformed, misinformed, illogical or his analysis is incomplete
Important note: use relevant experience, commentaries or reference books as aids to reading.
* Level four - Syntoptical Reading (based on inspectional and analytical reading - how to read several books on the same subject)
The different stages of syntopical reading are:
* Preparations or first reading
1. Find the sense of the subject to reduce the amount of material
2. Inspect all the material to have a clear idea of the subject
* Syntopical Reading or second reading
1. Find the relevant paragraph
2. Build a set of terms that help you to understand all the different authors
3. Clarify the questions to which all the authors give an answer ("Look to all sides but take no sides").
4. Define the answers (join and sort the different and perhaps controversial answers or views on the subject)
5. Analyze the discussion to shine maximum light on the subject
How the different views are ordered (from more general to less general) is the key point of the last step. Support the view or answers by citation of the authors
1.4 The keys questions to answer
* What is the book about as a whole?
The author suggests the reader should discover the leading theme of the book and how it is ordered in sub-themes.
* What is being said in detail and how?
Here we will have to discover the author's main propositions, arguments and ideas.
* Is it true (in whole or in part)?
Understand the book first, then give your opinion
* What of it?
We must ask about the significance of the book, for the author and for us.
Inspectional reading will solve the first two questions...
Analytical reading will not have been completed until all four questions have been answered.
The last question is the most important one in syntopical reading.
2 Key lessons from "How to Read a Book"
* Preparations
1. Find the main sense of the subject to reduce the amount of material
2. Inspect all the material to have a clear idea of the subject
* Key lessons
1. Find the relevant arguments and propositions
2. Build a common platform for communication
3. Get the questions clear, so everybody can give an answer
4. Define the answers
5. Analyze the discussion to shed maximum light on the subject
The most important step is to analyze the different opinions and to be able to defend them. If a solution cannot be found, the analysis will clarify the problem, so someone can solve it later on (see sample of the author on progress).
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Paul Dolinsky (MSL quote), USA
<2007-07-04 00:00>
I read this book in HS, many years ago, having discovered it on my own. It was very helpful. It made me realize that it was OK to re-read texts,and that I wasn't mentally slow, if I didn't get all the meaning on my first reading. It gave me an overview of reading, and was much superior to what I was getting in HS English classes, which focused only on grammar.
I recommend this book to people, in particular, who want to improve their reading comprehension, and writing skills. Let Dr. Adler be your tutor. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and the editor of the Great Books, pub by the U. of Chicago. He wrote during a time when education itself was valued, not just education to pass tests or get a good job. This book could help you build a solid foundation in reading comprehension.
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Lee Say Keng (MSL quote), Singapore
<2007-07-04 00:00>
Since my college days, reading has been my life-long passion. It will continue to be that way. Currently, I am also a prolific & voracious reader. Amazon, followed by Alibris & Abebooks, plus Kinokuniya Bookweb, are currently my active sources of books.
Towards the end of 1991, as part of my journey through mid-life transition, I actually established a small retail store to deal exclusively in learning, thinking & creativity books & other resources, in conjunction with the formation of my own strategy consulting business. Since then (& till mid-2004 when I decided to withdraw from all retail operations), the store gave me abundant access to a lot of great books & other useful resources. At the same time, it fueled & bankrolled my relentless reading pursuits.
One of the first few books I have read & eventually sold in my own store was 'How to Read a Book' by Mortimer Adler.
It was also the first book that set the ball rolling in my continuing search for better understanding of the reading faster/better comprehension equation. This book introduced me to the four specific levels of reading & reading comprehension, each requiring a specific set of reading strategies:
- elementary reading;
- inspectional reading;
- analytical reading;
- syntopical reading;
In addition, for more effective performance in the academic environment, there are subject-specific reading strategies to follow. All these reading strategies are systematically covered by the authors.
The most productive personal learning experiences I got out of this wonderful book are the syntopical reading techniques, which allow me to digest several books in the same genre simultaneously. I absolutely love syntopical reading!
Hence, I have no hesitation at all in considering Mortimer Adler's book, despite the fact that it was originally published in the 1940s, the best & unparalleled in the genre. I strongly recommend this book to anyone, who wants to read faster & comprehend better, to get hold of & read this book in the first instance.
During the ensuing years, I came across a few other books which have influenced & helped in expanding my personal repertoire of high-performance reading skills & techniques:
- Super Reading Secrets, by Howard Berg;
- Breakthrough Rapid Reading, by Peter Kump;
- PhotoReading, by Paul Scheele;
I will review each of them separately & share with readers what I have learned specifically.
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