Author: [[Mortimer J. Adler]] Publication date: August 15, 1972 Tags: #book #practical #ToProcess *** - [[#About this book|About this book]] - [[#The Nature of Reading|The Nature of Reading]] - [[#Classifying Books|Classifying Books]] - [[#Reading Methodology|Reading Methodology]] - [[#Reading Methodology#General Advice|General Advice]] - [[#Reading Methodology#Inspectional Reading|Inspectional Reading]] - [[#Reading Methodology#Analytical Reading|Analytical Reading]] - [[#Reading Methodology#Syntopical Reading|Syntopical Reading]] - [[#Becoming A Book's Owner|Becoming A Book's Owner]] - [[#How To Read Specific Types Of Books|How To Read Specific Types Of Books]] - [[#How To Read Specific Types Of Books#Practical Books|Practical Books]] - [[#How To Read Specific Types Of Books#Imaginative Literature|Imaginative Literature]] - [[#How To Read Specific Types Of Books#History Books|History Books]] - [[#How To Read Specific Types Of Books#Scientific Books|Scientific Books]] - [[#How To Read Specific Types Of Books#Philosophical Books|Philosophical Books]] - [[#Navigating Information|Navigating Information]] ## About this book *** This is a practical book. It teaches the reader how to hone their reading skills beyond formal education, towards better understanding and neverending growth of mind. It is structured by the author as follows: 1. Baseline of reading including its goals, note taking, elementary and inspectional reading 2. Analytical reading 3. Advice to read all kind of books 4. Syntopical reading and beyond ## The Nature of Reading *** **Each book has its purpose** (332) Books can be read for amusement, information or learning. Some you will skim, few you will read superficially and fewer you will read analytically. Finally, only a very small proportion of great books will you reread to grow from it even further. **Quality over quantity** (164-165) Reading well is about quality before quantity. You should read few well-chosen book and discern wisely which one you shoud skim, inspect or read analytically. **Read for understanding** (7) At its most basic level, non-fiction reading is informative. But when one works through a challenging book to elevate their level of understanding of this book, they will grow exponentially. This is how one updates their mental models, understands the world better and acquires evergreen knowledge. **Relationship between reading and writing** (100) Reading for understanding helps improving your writing skills. Reciprocally, the art of writing helps improving your reading skills. **Improving your reading skills** (330) To improve your skills at reading, you must undertake the reading of difficult book that are slightly above your capacity of understanding. **Keeping an open mind** (293-294) When reading any book and especially one that is contrarian to your beliefs, you should keep an open mind and temporarily give up your beliefs beforehand, otherwise you'll only be able to criticize the book unfairly, without even understanding it. ## Classifying Books *** **Why pigeonholing books matter** (73) Categorizing or pigeonholing a book allows you to better understand the author's method to expose and organize their arguments and thoughts, which will in turn support your active reading of the material. **Fiction vs Expository** (60) While it may seem obvious, classifying it is the first essential action you should undertake when reading a book. Your first task is to establish if what you have in hand is a fiction book or an expository work, which is a book designed to convey knowledge. **Practical vs Theoretical** (65) Once you've established you're reading an expository work, you should classify it further by making the distinction between practical and theoretical. The former aims to tell you how you should do something or approach a particular problem. The latter tries to demonstrate what a particular subject is, based on facts and reasoning. **History, science and philosophy** (70-71) Most theoretical books can be devided into three categories: - History is about what happened somewhere at a given time. - Science on the other hand discuss facts, things that can happen anywhere, anytime. - Philosophy is finally very similar to science as it discusses facts and univeral truths, but it's deeply rooted in the human condition. If a book is about what's outside of your daily experience, it's likely a scientific book, otherwise it's a philosophical book. ## Reading Methodology *** ### General Advice **Be ultra picky with the books you read** (10) The first problem to solve if you want to learn from a book is to find an author who is more knowledgeable than you on a given topic and then to find their most insightful materials. **Active reading** (5) Reading effectively is active reading. It requires effort and deliberate engagement. (46-47) Active reading aims to answer all of the following questions: 1. What is the author main argument? 2. How does the author structure its proposal? 3. What is true about what the author? 4. So what? Why should you care about it? **Dynamic reading speeds** (39) You should adapt your reading speed to your reading material and adjust it dynamically so that it is neither too fast or too slow. ### Inspectional Reading **Inspectional reading** (18) The first level of reading beyond what formal education teaches you in an elementary fashion is **Inspectional Reading**. Its goals is to extract as much knowledge of a book as possible given a limited amount of time. **Skimming:** (32-35) First, you want to get a rough overview of the structure of a book and grasp its most valuable content. To do that, you either should skim or study each of the following elements: - Title page - Preface - Table of contents - Index (also take a look at keywords and most recurring references) - Publisher blurb - Key chapters Then, quickly browse the whole book. The whole process should take one hour tops. Many books won't require any further reading to get to their gist. **Superficial reading** (36) If the first inspection indicates there is a lot more value to get from this book, you may proceed with the second stage of inspectional reading and read the whole book rather quickly. Read actively but don't stop and go back, or spend much time to understand it perfectly. This will allow you to get a very good overview of the structure of this book and to understand the majority of its argument. ### Analytical Reading **Analytical Reading** (19) The second level of reading beyond formal education training and inspectional reading is **Analytical Reading.** Your goal when reading a book analytically is to extract all its substance given unlimited amount of time. **Grasp and state the main point** (76) If you're unable to state the main point of a book in a few words, then you didn't properly grasp it. When reading a book analytically, you first need to capture the book's essence and compress it with utmost brevity. **Outline the structure of the book** (76-77) A book is composed of many parts that are organized to form an unity supporting the main point of this book. When reading a book analytically, you need to outline those parts and how they relate to the whole. **Find out what problem the author is trying to solve** (92) When reading a book analytically, you need to state and organize the main problem and all sub-problems (or questions) the author is attempting to solve. **Ambiguity in communication** (96-97) A word can have a different meaning for the writer and the reader. In this case, communication becomes ambiguous and understanding between each part is flawed, incomplete or even not possible at all. An author can use words with multiple meaning and will have a specific one in mind. **Understanding the author** (98-99) Your job as a reader is to identify 'terms', or words conveying a specific meaning for the author. If you're successful with this task, you can then overcome the obstacle of ambiguity in communication and understand the author properly. **Rely on the context** (106) To understand a word's meaning, you should rely on the context. It is especially true if the author is using a word such as its meaning shifts from one sentence to another. **Building your own lexicon** (110-112) Identifying key words and their meaning for a given author in a given book is an incredible way to increase your understanding and improve your reading skill. You can for instance use a blank page of the book to list these words and their meaning in two separate columns, connecting them relevantly as you go. **Logical aspect of conveying knowledge** (115) An author passes knowledge onto the reader by building terms into propositions into arguments. This is the logical aspect of conveying knowledge. **Grammatical aspect of conveying knowledge** (119) Your job as an analytical reader is to isolate the most important words, sentences and paragraphs to truly grasp the knowledge conveyed by the author. This is the grammatical aspect of conveying knowledge. **Beware of where your attention lies** (123) When reading a book, you should keep in mind that your goal is to understand more about the problem the author is trying to solve. Thus, you should focus more on what intrigues you in relation to this problem, and less on what picks your interest, though you can still log it as a reference for future inquiry. **Reconstructing an author's logical flow** (128) When reading a book analytically, it's a good idea to reconstruct the author's propositions and arguments on any support you'd like, perhaps even somewhere on the book, on top of building your own lexicon. This is another way to own the book even further. **Criticizing a book** (141) Critizing the book once you've understood it is your responsibility. There are three judgements you can hold. You either agree, disagrees or suspends your judgement. (154-159) In case you end up diagreeing with an author after understanding a book, it can be either for one of the following reasons: 1. The author is missing pieces of information, or they rely on pieces of information that are factually incorrect. 2. The author's reasoning presents some flaws or fallacy that you can point out. 3. The author's arguments are incomplete and in your opinion some part of the problem remains to be solved. In this case, you don't really disagree, but you can hold your judgement until further research. In the three cases above, it's your responsibility as a reader to document your disagreement with logic and precise reasoning. **What to make of a disagreement** (147) Disagreement in any conversation on any medium can be resolved, and you should attempt to do so. Minds can be changed, opinions can be shared and in the end it's important to try and teach your own opinions against those of other people, including authors of the books you read. **Difference between knowledge and opinion** (149) Knowledge and opinion are two different things. The main difference is that the former relies logical arguments and evidences backing them up, while the latter is mostly a personal judgement with no factual support. **Definition of 'good reading'** (150) You know you've achieved good reading of a book once you understand it and are either in alignment with the author, or able to disagree constructively. **Intellectual honesty** (144) When criticizing a book, you have to do so constructively and not by ego, or just for the sake of it. (158) If you understood a book well, and you can't find valid reasons to disagree constructively with the author, then you have to agree with them. You can dislike the conclusion, but in all intellectual honesty you cannot use a feeling or an opinion of yours to disagree with someone without resorting to any argument. ### Syntopical Reading **Inspection prior to syntopical reading** (307) When inspecting a book prior to syntopical reading, you're looking for clues this specific book will convey valuable insights about the problem you're trying to solve. **Syntopical Reading** (19-20) The most complex level of reading is **Syntopical Reading**. Its goal is for the reader to build a broad and comprehensive overview of a given topic by studying multiple reading materials in relation to one another. (308-316) To read a collection of books syntopically: 1. Inspect it and capture all the relevant passages for the problem at hand. 2. Build a common lexicon to bring all the authors to a common ground of understanding. 3. Formulate a set of questions we want to answer to direct our investigation. 4. Identify points of friction and contrarian opinions between authors. 5. Analyse the problem and set order to it, making sure to stay neutral by quoting original authors as often as possible. **The Paradox of syntopical reading** (305) Reading a collection of books syntopically is paradoxal, in the sense that you need to skim several books to frame precisely the problem that you want to solve, but you need to know the nature of this very problem to narrow down the books that you'll want to focus on. ## Becoming A Book's Owner *** **Summarize your inspectional reading directly in the book** (51) You can add near the title page a quick summary with: 1. Which category the book belongs to 2. What's the author main argument 3. How the book is structured by the author This way, the book belongs to you and you can go back to it whenever you'd like. **Take notes directly in the book** (49-50) You should take ownership over every book you read, wether it's inspectionally, analyticall or syntopically. It goes by taking note directly on the book. Underline, circle and basically highlight most important words and/or passages. Mark key passages and fold the corner of their pages to retrieve them easily. Compress key arguments into simple sentences. Write down questions and reflection interesting passages may trigger in your mind. You can basically use any device that you see fit, as long as you engage with the book that you read. **The first and last pages of a book** (50) Last blank pages of a book can be used to add references to the author key points in chronological order, along with their page numbers. First blank pages can be used once the book is finished to take note of the author key points in what appears to you as a logical order. This way, you'll rearrange your newly found knowledge and make it your own. ## How To Read Specific Types Of Books *** ### Practical Books **Start with the problem** (193) When reading a practical book, you must identify the problem the author is trying to solve, and then how he suggests to do so. **Beware of persuasion techniques** (194) In a practical book, an author will sometimes use some form of emotional persuasion, usually tied to an emotional language. You should be able to recognize such occurrences and protect yourself from them, so that you remain unbiased in front of the author's opinion. **Take action!** (189) Most of the value you get from practical books is reaped by taking action. (196) If you agree with an author's advice while reading a practical book, and are overall aligned with them on the importance of the topic, it is your responsibility to take action over what you've just learned. ### Imaginative Literature **Read fiction actively** (199) You can read fiction as actively as you read expository books. After reading a fiction book, you should be able to name precisely why you enjoyed it or not. **Imaginative literature as an immersive experience** (200) Imaginative literature is before all an experience being conveyed to you by the author. Your main job as an active reader is to open the door for them and to fully embrace this experience. **How to fully appreciate imaginative literature** (204-207) The set of rules that can be applied to expository works translates easily into another set of rules designed to enhance and enrich your pleasure from reading imaginative literature: 1. Classify imaginative work properly 2. Summarize the heart of the plot in a couple sentences at most 3. Identify the text structure around the plot 4. Get acquainted with the book's cast of characters and event 5. Let yourself be immersed in the world created by the author Only once you've followed through the plot and appreciated the experience offered to you as a whole can you truly appreciate, criticize and discuss the book fairly. **Read stories in one-go** (212-213) The best way to read stories is in one-go, or in the shortest possible timeframe to maximize immersion, on top of helping you to grasp the unity of it. **Approach plays as a director** (218) A play is not exactly meant to be read, but to be played in the first place. Thus, a great way to read a play is to picture yourself as a director driving a cast of actors. You'll end up working on the play with the power of your imagination, while enjoying it way further than by simply reading it. **How to enjoy poetry** (223-224) A great poem can and should be read several time. You should start by reading it in one-sitting, then you should read it out loud. This method will favor immersion and get your imagination rolling. ### History Books **History as a learning medium** (235) History is an universal learning medium. We as a specie can learn through trial and error, as men of today are learning from men of the past. **Diversity is key to understand history** (233) Understanding history requires aggregation of multiple point of views on a given event. **Biographies and psychological biases** (238-240) Biographies are a kind of history books that is more vulnerable to bias than others, especially in the case of autobiography. Reading several takes on a person's life can help and the best way to get the most exhaustive viewpoint as you can is to read a definitive biography of someone's life. ### Scientific Books **Approach scientific books as a problem solver** (251) Reading scientific books require work and effort. While doing so, it's crucial to identify first of all the problem of author is trying to solve. (260) The golden rule to keep in mind when reading any (and especially scientific) books is that you should aim to understand the problem the author is trying to solve, and not necessarily to become an expert on the topic at hand. **How to dissect a scientific book** (252) A good scientific books states clearly where the author is biased or wants you to take something for granted. If it's not the case, you should sort assumptions from logical demonstrations. Your main job then remains to identify key technical terms and propositions they imply. ### Philosophical Books **How to classify philosophical books** (268) Philosophical books are mainly designed to convey and provoke thoughts. They can be divided in two categories: 1. Theoretical books, questioning what and why things are in the world and beyond. 2. Practical books, questioning what should universally be done from a moral point of view. **How to approach philosophical books** (280) Reading a philosophical book is like reading most expository works. You first need to identify the main questions the author is trying to solve, then strive to identify the core principles they rely on. As the philosopher will likely appeal to your own thinking, you should be especially wary not to overinterpret what they are saying and to differentiate your opinion and interpretation from their very own thoughts. (283-284) Good reading of a philosophical book is mainly about the time and effort you throw in, to exert the best quality of thought you're capable of. This is how you'll be able to make up your own mind among the contrarian opinions from various philosophers. **How to approach theological books if you're not a believer** (286) When reading a theological book, you should read it in good faith and accept temorarily the principles suggested by its author, so that you can truly understand their arguments. To some extent, this can be applied to scientific books as well, especially if you're not very familiar about a given discipline. ## Navigating Information *** **How to navigate infobesity** (3-4) Each information medium has its own usage and should be consumed thoughtfully and deliberately, especially nowadays where we're facing an information overload. **Approaching contrarian ideas** (293-294) When reading any book and especially one that is contrarian to your beliefs, you should keep an open mind and temporarily give up your beliefs beforehand, otherwise you'll only be able to criticize the book unfairly, without even understanding it. **The Problem of modern medias** (336) Modern medias are like a drug we become accustomed to. They kill our intellectual growth and make our mind passive. Active reading is the counteract to that. (4) Medias are designed to exploit our cognitive biases. They basically prepackage information and opinions, then feeds us without giving us any chance of truly understanding and making sense of it. **Don't get fooled by reporters** (244) Reporters of news almost always have a goal in mind when writing a paper or writing online. It's critical to reflect over their goal, to examine the arsenal of persuasion technique they employ and make sure we're consuming content from legitimate people. **Verbalism:** (126) Poor habit of using words with no regards for the meaning, concept and various experiences they convey.