How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren is our book for February 2021.
First Impressions
Well first things first it seems a little absurd for a book to be titled How to read a book.. If we didn’t know how to read a book how would we be able to read about how to? Obviously this book is about how to read better. By better they mean to read actively to read for information and understanding. How to read more effectively and make sure you are getting everything you want out of reading.
I will be honest this book seems kind of advanced. If you are not already a pretty decent reader than this will be hard for you. But, if you’re a good reader and wish to get better to where you can read anything efficiently and digest all of the information than I think this book will be great. I am hoping that once we read this that we will be more skilled and efficient for all of our other readings and we will get even more out of it. This book could have some amazing compound effects.
This book is old originally written in 1940 and revised a couple times after. The specific book I have mentions it was from 2014, but the last copyright I see is in 1972 so it’s a bit dated. This book is also quite dense and has difficult topics and ideas. It has the whole framework about how to thoroughly read a book and to read it well. The book is 336 pages with a lot of words on each page. This reading will be tough, but I am hoping that we will gain a lot out of it!
Join me in reading How To Read A Book and let’s improve our knowledge together.
Overview
Wow, I’ll be honest with you here. This book was a challenging one to read. But, just like the book says you do not gain anything from books that do not challenge you. Just by reading this book you have already improved your skill at reading, without even implementing the ideas it contains within.
Now that I have finished reading this monster I will attempt to state the main points of it for you here. There are lots of points so I am only going to discuss the ones that stood out to me:
- Read books quickly the first time, read books more than once
- Read the cover, preface, table of contents, index and a few paragraphs in order to decide if the book is worth reading or if only a skimming is required
- It is important to know how much time is worth spending on each book!
“Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehensive.”
“To be perplexed and know it”
The 4 basic questions a reader asks in active reading ( These must be answered in all reading except when it is entirely for pleasure)
- What is the book about as a whole?
- What is being said in detail and how?
- Is the book true? In whole or part?
- What of it? So what? What’s the significance?
The steps to analytical reading
Stage 1: Find out what the book is about
- Classify the book according to kind and subject matter
- State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity
- Enumerate it’s major parts in their order and relation and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole
- Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve
Stage 2: Rules for interpreting a book’s contents
5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words
6. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences
7. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in or constructing them out of sequences of sentences.
8. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve
Stage 3: Rules for criticizing a book as a communication of knowledge
A. General maxims of intellectual etiquette
9. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. (Do not say anything until you can say, I understand)
10. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously
11. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgement you make
B. Special criteria for points of criticism
12. Show wherein the author is uninformed
13. Show wherein the author is misinformed
14. Show wherein the author’s analysis is illogical
15. Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete
Whew that’s a lot of rules and guidelines for analytically reading a book. It will take a lot of work to do all of these things each time you read a book. What you choose to read from this is up to you.
The book talks about many more guidelines for reading such as how to do syntopical reading and how to approach reading each different genre of book. I am not going to get into those here though, If you would like to learn more about them grab the book!
Exercises and tests in the four levels of reading
The book generously includes some exercises at the end which help you to further improve you reading skills. It gives you paragraphs from some of the most influential books in history and tests you on them based on different levels of reading. This helps you to get an idea where you are currently at and how you can improve.
Recomended readings list
This book being all about how to read a book included a large recommended reading section about the most influential books in western history. The list is quite long. I picked out a few author’s that interested me and will be looking into reading them myself. These were:
- Epictetus
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Charles Darwin
- Friedrich Nietzche
- The Bible
Review
This book is very practical and filled with information. It should improve your reading skills, comprehension, and efficiency if you follow it. The rules covered for reading actively and analytically are long & difficult though. This book in itself was long and difficult. I found it to be quite dense and it was around 400 pages so it took some time.
The ideas of this book were clearly stated and it had a great table of contents and included a list of summarizing points after each section in the book which made it’s points easier to follow. How To Read a Book is thorough, logical, and useful.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in improving their reading skills and/or someone who reads academically.
Difficulty – 9/10: Long and technical
Clarity – 8/10: The points made in this book were relatively clear and easy to follow
Usefulness – 8.5/10: This book will be useful to anyone who is willing to read it and put in the effort it suggests to improve reading skill
Entertainment – 4/10: Not the most entertaining or inspiring book to read, but it was interesting to read some of the passages about great authors that the book included.
Overall – 8/10: Tough, but rewarding
If you enjoyed this post of would like more posts reviewing books like this go ahead and drop a like, share, subscribe, and comment what book you would like to see next. Thank you!
You can check out this year’s daily reading book here
The Daily Stoic