Do
you remember when the last time you read a book was?
Do
your daily reading habits centre on tweets, Facebook updates, and Instagram? If
you’re one of countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you
might be missing out. Reading has a significant number of benefits, and here
are some benefits of reading:
Ø
Mental
Stimulation. ...
Ø
Stress
Reduction. ...
Ø
Knowledge.
...
Ø
Vocabulary
Expansion. ...
Ø
Memory
Improvement. ...
Ø
Stronger
Analytical Thinking Skills. ...
Ø
Improved
Focus and Concentration.
Ø
Better
Writing Skills
Ø
Immense
inner peace and tranquillity
Ø Budget-Friendly Entertainment
In
this Blog, I am going to describe the Book Summary of "HOW TO
READ A BOOK".
In
this book, Auther has Mentioned the four levels of Book reading
Four levels of reading
The four levels of reading are:
- Elementary
reading. This involves the
basic literacy skills you learn in elementary school. The author and Editor (Adler
and Van Doren ) don’t focus on elementary reading assuming that, if you’re
reading the book, you’ve already reached this level.
- Inspectional
reading. Skim the book to
get a sense of what it’s about and decide if it’s worth an analytical
reading.
- Analytical
reading. Outline a book,
interpret its contents, and then judge it.
- Syntopical
reading. Work out what
your questions are, read multiple books that help answer your questions,
and then analyze the discussion.
These are levels rather than types because the higher levels encompass the
lower ones.
Inspectional reading
There are two types of inspectional reading, which may be performed at
the same time: skimming (also known as pre-reading); and superficial reading.
Skimming
The aim is to find out if the book deserves a more careful reading. Even
if you plan to read a book carefully later, it’s still a good idea to skim it
first. skimming will give you an idea of its form and structure.
Start by looking at the title page, preface, contents page, index (if
applicable), and publisher’s blurb. Move on to chapters that look important and
see if they have a summary statement at the beginning or end. Flick through and
read a couple paragraphs, but never more than a page or two, looking for the
main contention. Make sure you read the last few pages and epilogue (if any) as
authors will often summarise their main point here.
This whole process should take you a few minutes, and no more than an
hour. By the end, you’ll have a good sense of what the book is about.
Superficial Reading
This seems to apply only to difficult books (both fiction and
non-fiction). The first time through a book, don’t stop to look up or ponder
things you don’t understand. Just focus on what you can understand and don’t
get tripped up by footnotes, references, etc.
Looking up unfamiliar terms and allusions prematurely makes it harder to
see the unity of the book. When you focus on the fine points, you’ll miss the
big points. You’ll have a much better chance of understanding the book the
second time after you have the big picture.
Analytical reading
This section is really long – Adler and Van Doren set out 3 stages of
analytical reading with 11 rules. I’ve split out the summary of
analytical reading into a separate post to keep
this one more manageable.
Syntopical reading
Syntopical reading is the highest level of reading and is very
demanding. It is more relevant to expository works than to fiction.
Where to start
Deciding what books to read is difficult. There are two steps involved
here:
- Compile
a bibliography. Find all books
that may be relevant to your chosen subject.
- Do
an inspectional reading of all of them.
Do this before you attempt an analytical reading of any of them. A common
mistake is to try and combine the inspectional and analytical reading
stage, which means you will read some books too slowly and other books too
quickly. The inspectional reading should tell you whether the book says
something important about your subject. This will cut down your
bibliography substantially. It will also give you a clearer idea of your
subject so that when you analytically read some books, you will be more
productive.
The fundamental problem to syntopical reading is that it’s hard to know
where to start. Even if you do have an idea, finding the relevant books and
passages can take an inordinate amount of time.
Five steps of syntopical
reading
After you’ve found the relevant books through your inspectional
readings, the five steps involved in syntopical reading are:
- Find
the relevant passages. In syntopical
reading, the goal is to answer your problems, not the
author’s. It’s rare for an entire book to be directly relevant to your
subject, so you need to find the most relevant passages. You’re not trying
to understand a particular book in full; you’re trying to find out how it
can be useful to you. You can combine this step with your inspectional
reading.
- Bring
the authors to terms. Different authors
will use different words to describe the same idea. You have to establish
the terms you want to use, and bring the authors to them
rather than the other way around. Essentially, it’s translation. For
example, most authors only use the term “progress” to describe
improvements, whereas others also use the term to describe changes that
are not improvements. This may be the most difficult step in syntopical
reading.
- Get
the questions clear. Frame a set
of questions that will help answer your problem. Sometimes an author’s
answer to your questions will be implicit rather than explicit, as they
may not have had your particular question in mind when writing the book.
- Define
the issues. Define the issues
in a way that is as joined up as possible, which may not be in the same
way as any given author.
This seems very similar to Get
the question clear An issue is joined up when two authors understand
the question the same way but answer it in different ways. Often, however,
authors give different answers because they have conceived the question
differently, rather than because their views of the subject differ.
- Analyse
the discussion. You probably
won’t be able to find the truth in one set of answers given by a single
author. More likely you will find it in the conflict of opposing answers,
many of which will have persuasive evidence and reasons to support them.
Analysing the discussion requires not only that you ask the right questions,
but you do so in a logical way, bringing order to the discussion.
What is the point of
syntopical reading?
The point of syntopical reading is not to give a final answer on the
questions being asked. If it did, the syntopical analysis would stop being
syntopical and you would just be another voice weighing in on the discussion.
Instead, the point is to look at all sides and take no sides.
This is an ideal you will never reach since it’s impossible to look
at all sides exhaustively. Taking no sides is more possible,
but still difficult. It’s easy to become partial to a view and summarise
arguments in different ways, emphasising parts that you find more convincing.
To mitigate this risk, a syntopical reader should constantly refer back to the
authors’ actual texts. If presenting to a wider audience, quote the authors’
opinion or argument in their own language so that the
A common reason why people struggle to read the “great books” is because
they were written in a certain order. A later writer may have been influenced
by an earlier one. This is more relevant to history and particularly
philosophy, because philosophers tend to read each other’s works. It’s less
important for science and fiction books.
Commentaries and
summaries
Use commentaries and abstracts (or summaries) sparingly because they may
not be correct.
Dictionaries and
encyclopedias
To use a reference book well, you must have some idea of what you want
to know. Reference books can’t answer all questions.
Don’t look up every word you don’t know in a book because looking up too
many words will make you lose sight of the book’s unity and order. Occasional
use is fine, but even then it’s better not to during your first reading, unless
the word seems important to the author’s point.
Reading speeds
The goal should not be to “read faster” but to vary your reading speed
depending on the nature and difficulty of the material. Many books are hardly
worth a skim. Other books should be read slowly, giving you time to comprehend
it properly. But even then, you shouldn’t read the whole book
at the same pace. Some parts should be read quickly, and other parts with
complex and important ideas should be read very slowly.
To fix these bad habits, place your thumb and first two fingers together
as a “pointer”. Sweep the pointer across a line of text, slightly faster than
feels comfortable for your eyes to move. Force yourself to keep up with the
pointer. Keep practising, and keep increasing the speed at which your pointer
moves. This improves your concentration as well as your reading speed. When you
focus on your pointer, it’s harder to daydream and let your mind wander.
How to read particular
types of books
Imaginative literature
Be open to imaginative literature and allow it to move you – don’t
resist it. Imaginative literature aims to please rather than to teach. But it
can still teach us indirectly by giving us experiences to reflect on.
Unlike expository books which try to express things as clearly as
possible, imaginative literature tries to maximise ambiguity
and relies on implications. Don’t waste your time looking for terms,
propositions and arguments.
How to read novels and
stories
Read stories quickly and with complete immersion, ideally in one
sitting. Otherwise, you may forget things that happened and it will be harder
to grasp the unity of the book.
Don’t disapprove of a character’s actions until you understand their
motivations.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the many characters and incidents when
reading some novels, such as War and Peace, particularly if they
have strange-sounding names. Think of it like moving to a new town. There are
lots of new people in the beginning but, over time, the important characters
will become clear. So too with events – we may not understand events as they
occur; only when we look back on them.
The major epics – the Iliad, the Odyssey, Aeneid, Divine
Comedy, and Paradise Lost – are incredibly demanding to
read. But the rewards that come from a good analytical reading of these epics
are at least as great as for any other books.
How to read plays
A play, when read, is not a complete work. It is only a complete work
when performed on a stage. To that end, try to imagine directing the play when
you read it. Tell your actors how to deliver certain lines or act a scene. You
will learn a lot from doing so and have a lot of fun, too.
Most plays are not worth reading, because they are incomplete works,
intended for the stage. Great plays that are worth reading include those of:
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, and Molière. Reading these plays
can be difficult because of how language has changed since they were written.
if you come across a puzzling passage, try reading it out loud, slowly, and
with expression. This will often clear up difficulties.
Greek tragedies are perhaps the most difficult to read for several
reasons:
- When
originally conceived, three tragedies were presented at the same time,
dealing with a common theme. With one exception (the Oresteia of
Aeschylus), only single plays or acts survive.
- We
know almost nothing about how Greeks directed their plays, so it’s hard to
direct them mentally.
- The
plays were often based on stories their audiences knew well, but which we
do not.
Two pieces of advice for reading tragedies:
- The
essence of a tragedy is (lack of) time. In any Greek tragedy, the problem
could have been resolved if there had been enough time.
- When
the plays were acted, the actors wore buskins on their feet that made them
taller than the members of the chorus, as well as masks. The chorus did
not wear buskins, and sometimes wore masks. Keep that size difference in
mind when reading the words of the chorus and actors.
How to read poems
Many people find poetry difficult, obscure, complex and not worth
reading. Adler and Van Doren argue that lyric
poetry is not always as demanding as you may think if you approach it in the
right way, and the rewards are often worth the effort you are willing to put
in.
When reading a poem, you should read it through without stopping,
whether you understand it or not. Any good poem has unity, and you won’t see
this unity unless you read it without stopping. Then, read it again, out loud.
When you say the words out loud, it forces you to understand them better. The
rhythm of the poem will help you understand where to place any emphasis.
Even though you may not “come to terms” with a poem, you should still
try to find its key words, as it can help with understanding. Those key words
may reveal themselves through rhyme, rhythm, or repetition.
Most good poems involve some sort of conflict. Often this conflict is
implicit, rather than explicit – the conflict between love and time, life and
death, transience and eternity.
People sometimes resort to commentaries and author biographies to try to
understand a poem. But knowing the context of a poem doesn’t mean you’ll
understand the poem itself. There is no substitute for reading a poem over and
over. Great poems deserve many repeated reads.
How to read practical
books
A practical book can’t solve the problems it sets out to solve. Only the
reader can solve those problems, by taking action. How to Read a Book,
for example, is a practical book. But to solve the problem of learning to read,
the reader has to take action in the real world by practising on many books.
Since the author of a practical book cannot anticipate the exact real-world
circumstances their reader will face, any advice in the book will be general,
not specific.
Some practical books, like How to Read a Book, mostly
contain rules. Other practical books may focus more on the principles that
underlie rules (e.g. books about economics, politics, morals), so you may have
to read between the lines to find those rules. This distinction is not always
clear-cut as books often contain both rules and principles. It’s more a matter
of relative emphasis.
Judging a practical book involves two questions:
- What
are the author’s objectives?
- What
means does the author propose for achieving those objectives?
When you judge a practical book, everything depends on the author’s
goals. If you don’t think the author’s goals are worth pursuing, the book will
be irrelevant to you. Every practical book contains some form of propaganda and
persuasion, as the author tries to convince you their goals are worth pursuing.
They may play to your emotions in the process – be alert to this.
When reading a moral treatise or political or economic book, you should
be aware of the context in which it was written. For example, Aristotle’s Politics was
written in the context of slavery.
With respect to the four questions for reading:
- What
is the book about? – not much
change here.
- What
is being said in detail, and how? –
not much change here.
- Is
it true? – this one
changes a bit. Focus on whether the author’s objectives are worth pursuing
and, if so, whether their suggested means are the best ways of pursuing
them.
- What
of it? – this one
changes the most. A practical book implies action so if you agree that the
author’s goals are worth seeking and that the means recommended are likely
to achieve those goals, you should probably act as the book suggests. One
reason why you may not is if you don’t think you are the target audience
for the book.
How to read history
Adler and Van Doren emphasise the “story” in “history” – they see
narration as being the essence of history. Facts are difficult to find. It’s
hard enough to work out what the “facts” are in a courtroom, which deal with
recent events and where we can cross-examine witnesses. Imagine how much harder
it is to find facts that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.
There are two rules of reading history:
- Read
more than one account of the same event or period where possible. Historians can take different approaches to
history, and those approaches affect how they depict events.
- Read
history to learn about human nature.
Thucydides, for example, gives the only surviving account of the Peloponnesian
War between Athens and Sparta. The main point of reading Thucydides is not
to find out what actually happened but to learn from the Greeks’ mistakes,
which people have repeated over and over since. Thucydides’ work has
influenced many leaders in subsequent years.
With respect to the four questions for reading:
- What
is the book about? – all history
has a limited scope. You should understand what the author has set out to
do.
- What
is being said in detail, and how? –
look at how the author has divided up their book and which aspects they’ve
focused on.
- Is
it true? – the author
may have misunderstood some facts, misused some sources, or overlooked
something.
- What
of it? – history may
affect our actions more than any other literature. It gives us suggestions
for what is possible, so that we can seek to repeat it or avoid the same
mistakes.
Biographies
Biographies are a type of history, as they give an account of a person’s
life.
A definitive biography is meant to be the final,
exhaustive, scholarly work on a particular person’s life. It’s usually written
after several non-definitive biographies have been written and found to be
inadequate. Definitive biographies are not always easy to read, since they are
so thorough.
An authorised biography is usually commissioned by the
subject’s heirs or friends. They tend to be biased towards making the subject
look good.
Similar issues arise with the trustworthiness of autobiographies.
But although an autobiography cannot be completely true, it cannot be
completely false, either. Every autobiography will reveal something about its
author.
Current events
Reading about current events comes with many of the same issues as
reading about history – we can’t be sure we are getting all the facts. When
reading a contemporary book, you should beware of a potential hidden agenda in
the way you don’t when reading Aristotle, Dante or Shakespeare.
The most important thing to know is who is writing the report, and how
they see the world. What does the author want to prove, and to whom? Do they
assume any special knowledge/bias or use special language? (Many authors just
write for those who agree with them.) Do they know what they are talking about?
Digests (and summaries!)
You cannot condense the very best articles and books without losing
something. For these articles or books, then, the summary should encourage you
to read the original.
How to read science and
mathematics
Finding out what the author’s problems were (Rule 4) is particularly
important for reading science and mathematics. The point of reading classic
scientific books is not to become knowledgeable about the subject matter since
the science has moved on since then. Rather, the point is to understand the
history and philosophy of science. To do that, you have to understand the
problems the authors were trying to solve and the background to those problems.
One thing that makes scientific books easier to read is that they tend
to set out their terms, propositions and arguments clearly. (Poetical works, by
contrast, do not – so are harder to read well in many respects.)
The two main difficulties in reading a scientific book are:
- Following
the arguments. Science is mostly
inductive – it relies on observable evidence to establish a general
proposition. That evidence comes from experiments. Understanding the
history of science therefore requires becoming familiar with classical
experiments, as well as the classical books. But you can still make a
start without going through all those steps.
- Mathematics. Adler and Van Doren argue that maths is
beautiful and intellectually satisfying, as it gives a “really logical
exposition of a really limited problem”. They encourage you to learn the
language of maths, starting with Euclid’s Elements of Geometry,
to gain an appreciation for it. However, if your aim is to read a
scientific work with some maths in it (rather than a maths book itself),
you can often skip the maths – or at least the parts that give you trouble
– and get a better grasp of the whole. Remember – you’re not trying to
become competent at the subject matter but just to understand the problem.
Popular science
Popular science books and articles are for a lay audience, so contain
relatively few descriptions of experiments and little mathematics. But they’re
not “easy” to read either. You still have to read actively and the rules for
analytical reading apply perhaps with more force than almost anywhere else.
Such books can be very good, but they suffer from the same problems that
summaries and digests do – you have to rely on the writer’s judgement of what
is worth including.
How to read philosophy
The most important thing to do when reading philosophy is to work out:
- What
questions is the author trying to answer?
- What
assumptions does the author make?
- Are
there any “controlling principles” underlying his work?
Those questions and assumptions may be explicit or implicit. For
example, Aristotle’s works assume that you have read his other works. When a
philosopher asks you to assume something, you should do so even if you think
the assumption is untrue. See what follows from that assumption and reasoning.
It’s also a good mental exercise to pretend to believe something you don’t.
Distilling an author’s controlling principle is hard. For example,
Plato’s works contain a controlling idea that philosophical conversation is
perhaps the most important of all human activities. Plato rarely discusses this
idea explicitly in his works, but it’s a theme that runs throughout. It may
require years and many re-readings to distil such principles. But Adler and Van
Doren recommend you take the time to discover these principles yourself, rather
than taking the shortcut of reading what other people have written about those
philosophers.
Different branches of
philosophy
We can divide philosophical questions into theoretical questions and
normative questions:
- Theoretical
questions ask what is,
or what happens, in the world. Within this division, there can be
questions about being or existence (metaphysical philosophy) or questions
about knowledge and its limits (epistemology).
- Normative
questions ask what we
should do. These can be further divided into questions about how to live a
good life, or what is right and wrong (ethics) and questions about how
society should be run (politics or political philosophy).
Not all of the questions philosophers have asked and answered are
“philosophical” (or what we would consider philosophical now, anyway). For
example, philosophers used to think that celestial bodies (which didn’t seem to
change) and terrestrial bodies (which changed a lot) were made of different
matter. Scientific advances since then, namely the invention of the telescope,
show that celestial bodies actually do change, and that they
are made of the same matter as terrestrial bodies.
Philosophy vs science
The difference between science and philosophy is not always clear.
Science generally tries to describe the nature of things
whereas philosophy tries to explain those things.
Both fields seek to prove general truths, but their methods differ. At a
very high level, scientific books emphasise things that lie outside your
normal, daily experience, while philosophical books do not. A philosophical
book encourages readers to refer to their own normal and common experiences to
verify the writer’s claims.
Answering philosophical questions is different from answering scientific
or historical questions. You can’t really perform experiments or do research.
All you can do is think. Your thinking doesn’t have to be in a vacuum – you can
test it against your experience. But philosophical questions are tested
against common experiences, the kind of experiences you have
by being human. Ultimately you have to answer philosophical questions yourself
and come up with solid arguments to back up your answers. You can’t defer to
experts as you may have to do in science.
Both philosophy and science use technical terms. Philosophy is
particularly tricky because philosophers often take terms from common speech
and use them in a special, technical sense. It’s easy to misunderstand what a
philosopher is saying.
How to read social
science
The “core” of social science includes anthropology, sociology, politics
and economics. These fields try to understand human society. A broader
definition of social science may also include law, business and education, but
those fields are often more focused on training people for professional work.
Social science often appears easy to read because it describes
experiences common to most people (like philosophy). It’s also often written in
a narrative style. Many concepts used in social science have become commonplace
so we feel familiar with its jargon. Terms such as culture, status, in-group, etc
have seeped through into everyday conversation. The author’s attitudes and
views also tend to come through strongly, as people are likely to have strong
opinions on matters of social science.
However, social science is actually quite hard to read for several
reasons:
- To
read analytically, you have to put aside your opinions temporarily. You
must remain open to understanding what the author is trying to say. Your
priors may also interfere with your attempts to judge the book fairly and
answer the question, What of it?
- The
apparent familiarity of the jargon can be an obstacle to understanding.
Technical terms are widely misused in popular journalism, and authors may
not stipulate their terms clearly up front.
- Social
science is a mixture of different fields. Much of it is a mix of science,
philosophy and history, maybe even with some fiction thrown in. The
mixture also varies from book to book. This makes it hard to answer even
the first rule of analytical reading, What kind of book is this?
- Typically,
there won’t be a single, authoritative work on any social science subject.
The fields are constantly evolving and authors have to keep revising their
books. To understand a topic, syntopical reading is particularly
important.
My
conclusion
This book contains some useful advice, in every
section of fields you can read and use this book to start reading book by
choosing as per interest however rules on analytical reading seem to overlap a
lot with rules for critical thinking. I’ve long thought that many arguments and
disagreements are because people mean different things by the same words, and
could be avoided if people defined their terms more explicitly. It makes sense
that the same principle can apply to
Overall, I according to me they it may be true that you’re not going to
get the same thing reading, I would say it is worth reading more than the
original. Even if the interpretation is “wrong”, as a reader you should think
critically about it anyway, and you can derive value from reading and refuting
wrong ideas
