How to Read a Book

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to improve my writing for my upcoming blog posts. Then I thought that by reading lots of books until today, I should have somehow grasp the concept of “good writing” from writers by now. Then the question is raised for myself how good a reader I am, while I’m not remembering the most of the content of the books several months after finishing. So that chain of thoughts led me to begin with understanding how “good reading” should be. After a short research, I came across the book “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer J. Adler. Very straightforward title matching with my need.

Most distinct feature of the writer that I realized from the very beginning of the book is that he was very keen to generate long and fancy sentences to convey simple terms and concepts. Maybe it’s just his method to convince the audience for ideas and proposals but this method has mostly negative effect on me and push me to do “Inspectional Reading” (in his term) for his book.

I really liked the concept and the structure that he proposed about “reading”. I found many similarities with Bloom’s Taxonomy (hierarchical model for learning/understanding). That’s why I directly jumped in and tried skim the information about “Analytical Reading”. For the rest of the chapters which I was not interested too much, I quickly go through the pages to see if there’s something useful.

My suggestion would be to read the first comment on Goodreads. Nandakishore already reviewed the whole book better than any of us. Then do your inspectional reading and find your interested areas from the book.

I’ll add the complete structure of the analytical reading directly with writer’s word. We may not be able to or simply don’t want to perform all of these steps that he mentioned but I find it useful to keep in mind that we should try to understand the intention of the book and the writer, focused problems and proposals (and how the proposals are backed), in what extent you agree or disagree with the author and why and how did you come to this conclusion.

So here’s the short definition of all reading levels and details of the analytical reading:
1. Elementary Reading: This level of reading is for the purpose of understanding the literal meaning of a text. It involves the ability to identify main ideas and details, as well as understanding the structure and organization of the text.
2. Inspectional Reading: This level is for the purpose of identifying the scope, structure, and content of a text. It involves skimming or scanning the text to gain a general understanding of what the text is about and whether it is worth reading in more depth.
3. Analytical Reading: This level is for the purpose of understanding the meaning, significance, and arguments of a text. It involves closely reading and critically analyzing the text, identifying the author’s main points, and evaluating the evidence and reasoning used to support those points.
4. Syntopical Reading: This level is for the purpose of comparing and contrasting different texts on the same subject. It involves reading multiple texts on a given topic and comparing and contrasting the arguments and perspectives presented in each text.

First Stage of Analytical Reading: Finding what a book is about:
1. You must know what kind of book you are reading, and you should know this as early in the process as possible, preferably before you begin to read
2. State the unity of the whole book in a single sentence, or at most a few sentences (a short paragraph)
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 to the unity of the whole. / Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole
4. Find out what the author’s problems were

Second Stage of Analytical Reading: Finding what a book says:
6. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words
7. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences
8. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences
9. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and as to the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve

Third Stage of Analytical Reading: Criticizing a book as a communication of knowledge
General maxims of intellectual etiquette:
10. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book (Do not say you agree, disagree or suspend judgement, until you can say “I understand.”)
11. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously
12. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgement you make

Special criteria for point of criticism:
13. Show wherein the author is uninformed
14. Show wherein the author is misinformed
15. Show wherein the author is illogical
16. Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete