How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (A Touchstone book)

Good material recommended for those who seek a productive change in their personal and professional lives.

this is leadership stuff; excellent material as a foundation in your library

I'm going to have to disagree with the other reviewers of this book, the first 1/2 of the book is just terrible, arrogant repetitive drivel. The book only gets moderately interesting in the second half, when the How To Read .... section and the section on syntopical reading (again repetitive but at least readable).

The first two books talks about the various levels of reading, split into 4 levels: Elementary, Inspectional, analytical and finally syntopical.

Elementary = basics essentially being able to read at the level of an 8 year old, recognising words and sentences etc

Inspectional - Divided into two types Skimming (Pre-reading) and superficial. Basically understand the outline of a book through the table of contents, another other dividers like chapters and subheadings, and understand the general landscape of the book by identifying its major landmarks.
Superficial reading is then a reading of the book, like one would an undemanding novel page by page without stopping, without pondering on deeper meanings or misunderstandings etc.

Analytical - Move on to understand a book, understand its place in relation to other books, start dissecting it, trying to state the unity main premises etc basically be able to confidently talk about the book, this is the plot, these are important points etc.

This exposition on how to read, expands these, simple, commonsense ideas, with infuriating repetition (genuinely ridiculous levels of repetition) takes up some 190 pages and nothing more is said that that stated above, I challenge anyone to show otherwise. Just to take one example "How to use a dictionary" says dictionaries are used to find the meanings of unfamiliar words, but takes some 5 pages and 1500 words to do so. In summary the first of the book is a disgrace that should not have been printed.

DO NOT READ THE FIRST HALF JUST LOOK UP!

The second half however has some reasonable content, but again is far too repetitive to merit much praise. I would certainly recommend purchasing the book for the second half and will therefore not condense the second half other than to say it describes methods of how to read and approach different reading matter that is sometimes mildly informative.

The whole book reads like the authors are trying to inflate themselves as intellectuals when they are actually terrible lightweights with nothing much to say.
Adler was a philosopher of sorts, and I did read a few of his books after this and to be fair to the man (who has produced a terrible book here) wrote a reasonable introduction to Aristotle although it is still full of the characteristic ostentatious writing style, of a man whose limited intelligence shows in his repetition (again repetition, why does he repeat himself so) and ego.

Charles Van Doren the co-author was a quiz show cheat on the famous Twenty-one and I think that is all there is to say.

I am incredibly surprised this book has such good reviews.

The first 200 pages are a waste of ink, the last 200 are worth skimming but contain nothing you would miss. I would still however recommend a purchase, if not to witness a literate idiot attempt to sound intelligent.

Imagine me - there I was, for decades of my life, thinking I knew how to read a book. I'd advanced through elementary school and prep, into college and finally to graduate school when I discovered, to my horror, that I in fact did not know how to read! Perhaps that helps to explain my affinity to literacy programmes, with whom I will begin working again come this Wednesday.

But no, perhaps I overstate the situation. What I actually mean to say is that it was not until my graduate school days that I happened across the most excellent work How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. This staple had somehow eluded me; familiar as I was with both Adler and Van Doren, I had never encountered this text.

This book was written in 1940, as World War II was beginning and the Great Depression ending; it was revised in the 60s and again in 70s, with the assistance of Charles Van Doren, another person who had had some difficult dealings with Columbia, due to his involvement in the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. Van Doren moved away from the East Coast and landed in Chicago, near Adler, at Britannica, also again near Adler, and has the kind of intellect and unconventional circumstance that Adler admired. Adler of course had his own unique academic career, failing to get an undergraduate degree due to a physical education requirement that went unmet.

The book itself is divided into four main sections with two sizeable appendices.

The Dimensions of Reading
In this section, the authors look as types of reading and reading levels. They look at basic goals for reading, and discuss different types of learning. While they do not get into the theoretical complexities of learning styles as intricately as more recent educational theorists, they do make interesting and insightful distinctions between learning by instruction and learning by discovery.

This section is, in fact, full of rules. Rules for notetaking, annotating (highlighting, underlining, summarising, etc.), skimming, comprehending, etc. are all presented in an almost overwhelming sequence. There is so much to remember while reading (and I remember how smug I felt at having discovered many, if not most, of the rules on my own). But the authors beg for the rules to be consistently applied so that they merge together to become simple habit. They use the analogy of learning to ski - the rules are important, each in and of itself, but successful skiing transcends a mere application of rules until they become a natural impulse. So it is with reading.

Analytical Reading
This is crucial for true benefit and comprehension of any book. The authors talk about analysis in stages:

o Pigeonholing a book
o X-raying a book
o Coming to terms with an author
o Determining an author's message
o Criticising a book fairly
o Agreeing or disagreeing with an author
o Aids to reading

Approaches to Different Kinds of Reading Matter
In this section, the authors look at critical differences between different styles of books. It is obvious to even the inexperienced reader that reading a technical manual is vastly different from reading plays, poems, or history texts. Even the most educated of people occasionally stumble when confronted with high-level material from outside fields, such as asking the social scientist to deal with mathematical and scientific texts, or asking the physicist to deal with history and psychology treatises. One might argue about their divisions, but within the chapters they cover a very broad area.

The Ultimate Goals of Reading
Why does anyone read in the first place? Here the authors talk about developing beyond individual books into fields of learning, introducing ideas of synoptic reading and understanding the importance for doing so. Again charting rules of engagement for multiple texts, the authors discuss the importance of reading for understanding and deeper comprehension.

* * *

The first appendix consists of a lengthy list of the great books identified by Adler, modified over time by the various people involved in great books curriculum development. This is an admittedly Western-dominated list.
The list is certainly a long one. There are 137 authors, often with several works attached, recommended in this list. One can find this list in physical form in the Great Books series that is a companion to the Britannica. Itself only recently updated and revised, it consists of several linear feet of bookshelves, and even their recommended 10-year plan is ambition and doesn't cover the entirety of the series. The list is presented (as the book set is organized) in chronological order; this is not the best order in which to read the works.

The second appendix is actually a series of reading exercises for self-examination or group consideration. These are designed to be used for different levels of readers and different intentions. The authors tackle the question of arbitrary and cultural bias in manners of testing, coming to the pragmatic conclusion that, so long as academic and society advancement is tied to these kinds of testing and evaluations, it makes sense to learn how to do them, and however biased they may be in form or content, they still do provide a good measure, if not the best possible measure, for reading comprehension and retention.

One can tell that one's book has been successful when parody versions begin to appear. The year after the first edition of How to Read a Book appeared, there was the spoof How to Read Two Books; shortly thereafter there was a serious monograph by a Professor I.A. Richards entitled How to Read a Page.

Happy reading!

This book is a must read for anyone who is serious about his/her reading. The authors offer some perceptive tips, suggestions and ideas that are aimed at helping the average person imporve his/her reading skill. This is a book for graduate students who need the best 'how to' techniques to help them get the most out of their reading. This is also a book for the serious reader who is not content with turning page after page - going through the mechanical motions of reading. This is a book for anyone who believes that reading a book is a small life-changing exercise.

The authors begin by distinguishing between 4 levels of reading and provide techniques and examples for each level. What I found to be especially interesting are the chapters on how to read the different subjects: The authors introduce a single methodolgy for effective reading and then proceed to customize it for reading books on the sciences, philosophy, literature, fiction, etc.

Even if you consider yourself an effective reader, you'll be surprised at some of the insights that you will receive from this book. This is an excellent book, well written and well researched and it should be on every reader's shelf.

This book is one of the best books I have read, and it has exerted immense influence on me. I now read actively -- I mean, as much as possible -- and can feel how much more I am gaining from reading. The book has shown me the way to life-long learning.