Book Summary: How To Read A Book
How To Read A Book was first published in 1940 and not much about reading has changed since then. We simply switched the physical book for a digital version. The authors wrote about the best strategies for consuming the knowledge held within the pages of each book and those strategies are still just as relevant and useful today as they were in the 40’s.
Related Book Summaries:
Getting Things Done – David Allen – Book Summary
10% Happier – Dan Harris – Book Summary
7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey – Book Summary
Quotes:
The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.
True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
Book Summary Quick Notes:
- This book can help you get more from your reading, whether textbook or novel, it doesn’t matter.
- Learn to read actively and use some basic rules.
- Make an effort to understand what the author is trying to convey.
- First skim read to figure out if a book is truly worthy of reading. This is called inspectional reading. During inspectional reading we seek to answer the questions “what is this book about?” And “what kind of book is this?”
- Start with the title page and contents and drive straight into chapters or parts that interest you. This should help you immediately get a feel for any particular book and whether it is worth the time to read.
- Your first pass through of a book should be exactly that – a pass through. You should superficially skim over the main sections of a book without delving into footnotes or definitions of any new words you may have come across. Knowing what the whole of a book is about will help with context when you do your final pass through.
- Aim to examine only the surface of the book and find out what the surface has to teach you.
- Next up is analytical reading. This is where we begin to really break the book down and digest it. We want to identify the main themes, how they connect and also the authors aim.
- Make sure you understand key words and terms. What is the author trying to say? What is the structure of what they are saying? Can you identify their key points? How are they interconnected?
- Make sure to evaluate the significance and logic of the book as you go.
- The final step of the analysis is to judge the quality of the content. Do you agree with the book? Is the reasoning sound?
- Syntopical reading is reading two or more books from the same period about the same topic at the same time. Use your inspectional and analytical reading techniques to compare the books and their topics. With syntopical reading it is no longer the authors topic being examined but your own. It is also unnecessary to read the entirety of the books, simply use the parts that apply to your own thesis from them.
Book Discussion, Notes and Highlights:
I’ve really gotten a ton out of reading this book and love the approaches that are discussed. Below i’ve taken a collection of highlights from my reading of the book, I’ll add my own thoughts at the end of the highlights.
On Inspectional Reading:
The second level of reading we will call Inspectional Reading. It is characterized by its special emphasis on time. When reading at this level, the student is allowed a set time to complete an assigned amount of reading.
The idea is that if i gave you this particular book and only 15 mins, how would you get the most possible out of it? You obviously couldn’t read the entire thing so you would need a process to follow. Some way of filtering the book quickly to get at whatever advantage or advice the book has to offer.
another way to describe this level of reading is to say that its aim is to get the most out of a book within a given time—usually a relatively short time
Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically
When reading at this level, your aim is to examine the surface of the book, to learn everything that the surface alone can teach you. That is often a good deal.
Skimming or pre-reading is the first sublevel of inspectional reading. Your main aim is to discover whether the book requires a more careful reading.
Adler’s levels of reading are a very useful concept, of the four levels I found the second and the third to be the most beneficial to learn about. The first is called elementary reading and basically just consists of the raw ‘skill’ of reading, usually learned when you are quite young and of very little use for me to go over.
The second is called Inspectional reading, which the notes for are in this section but generally involves time limited reading and skimming. Third is analytical reading or what most people would loosly consider ‘normal’ reading. The fourth is syntopical reading which in a nutshell involves reading many books on the same topic or subject and comparing and organising the ideas in them.
Inspectional reading being the ‘art of skimming’ has been incredibly useful especially when you realise where to look and where most authors typcially include the most valuable information. It also helps as mentioned in the highlight above to use this method to consider whether or not a book even requires reading on a further level.
Secondly, skimming can tell you lots of other things about the book, even if you decide not to read it again with more care. Giving a book this kind of quick once-over is a threshing process that helps you to separate the chaff from the real kernels of nourishment.
STUDY THE TABLE OF CONTENTS to obtain a general sense of the book’s structure; use it as you would a road map before taking a trip.
From your general and still rather vague knowledge of the book’s contents, LOOK NOW AT THE CHAPTERS THAT SEEM TO BE PIVOTAL TO ITS ARGUMENT. If these chapters have summary statements in their opening or closing pages, as they often do, read these statements carefully.
Above all, do not fail to read the last two or three pages, or, if these are an epilogue, the last few pages of the main part of the book. Few authors are able to resist the temptation to sum up what they think is new and important about their work in these pages.
Some of the common places that hold the most value in books include; the contents page, summary pages and generally the last few pages of a chapter or section.
If you are seeking something very specific and dont necessarily need much more out of the book, jump straight from the contents to the section you need. Its silly to think about but i’ve read entire books before when simply jumping to a needed chapter would have done perfectly fine as well. This can also help stop you getting bogged down in a book that maybe was recommended to you for a specific reason. Simply jump to the section that was recommended and then move on.
Especially in non-fiction books, authors will tend to summarise their points at the end of chapters or sections. Make use of this by jumping straight to them instead of slogging through the chapter first. If the points made need more explaining or you really want an elaboration then go back and read the full chapter. Dont waste time digging through a chapter that may not offer what your looking for. Jump straight to the summaries and decide from there.
In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away
Skimming or pre-reading a book is always a good idea; it is necessary when you do not know, as is often the case, whether the book you have in hand is worth reading carefully.
It is generally desirable to skim even a book that you intend to read carefully, to get some idea of its form and structure.
Do not be afraid to be, or to seem to be, superficial. Race through even the hardest book. You will then be prepared to read it well the second time
Have you extracted what you can from the contents, summaries and other individual locations in a book? If yes, does it still warrant further reading or have you gained what you were after already? If it does warrant a further reading then we move on to quickly skimming through the book. As the author discusses, moving quickly through even a hard book can be very beneficial as it gives us a sense of the book of a whole, the themes and main plot points.
One of the best examples of this is the works of Shakespeare. Moving quickly through his plays can be a great help, it allows a sense of what the bigger ideas of the play or story is about. That way if we decide to come back and do a more analytical read of the book any areas that may have been more difficult will have more context and be a little easier to understand now.
we have not yet gone to the heart of the matter by stating the one simple prescription for active reading. It is: Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.
What is the book about as a whole? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics.
What is being said in detail, and how? You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author’s particular message.
Is the book true, in whole or part? You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two. You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not.
What of it? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them?
Reading a book on any level beyond the elementary is essentially an effort on your part to ask it questions (and to answer them to the best of your ability). That should never be forgotten. And that is why there is all the difference in the world between the demanding and the undemanding reader. The latter asks no questions—and gets no answers.
Why is marking a book indispensable to reading it? First, it keeps you awake—not merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or written. The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks. Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author.
There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here are some devices that can be used:
UNDERLINING—of major points; of important or forceful statements.
VERTICAL LINES AT THE MARGIN—to emphasize a statement already underlined or to point to a passage too long to be underlined.
STAR, ASTERISK, OR OTHER DOODAD AT THE MARGIN—to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or dozen most important statements or passages in the book. You may want to fold a corner of each page on which you make such marks or place a slip of paper between the pages.
NUMBERS IN THE MARGIN—to indicate a sequence of points made by the author in developing an argument.
NUMBERS OF OTHER PAGES IN THE MARGIN—to indicate where else in the book the author makes the same points, or points relevant to or in contradiction of those here marked
WRITING IN THE MARGIN, OR AT THE TOP OR BOTTOM OF THE PAGE—to record questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raises in your mind
On Analytical Reading:
Analytical reading is thorough reading, complete reading, or good reading—the best reading you can do. If inspectional reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given a limited time, then analytical reading is the best and most complete reading that is possible given unlimited time.
The analytical reader must ask many, and organized, questions of what he is reading.
On this level of reading, the reader grasps a book—the metaphor is apt—and works at it until the book becomes his own. Francis Bacon once remarked that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.
On Syntopical Reading:
Another name for this level might be comparative reading. When reading syntopically, the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve.
levels of reading are cumulative. Thus, elementary reading is contained in inspectional reading, as, indeed, inspectional reading is contained in analytical reading, and analytical reading in syntopical reading.
