I Read a Book on How To Read a Book - What I Learned

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If you are like me, you have a flair for reading. I read as much as I can, whenever I can. I don’t really get much reading when I’m in school, but when I get home for the holidays, I use that ample time to pick a book.

I read books that interest me, books I find curious, and books that increase my knowledge of things.

A book that I read that ticked all three boxes for me is, How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. The title itself piqued my interest and brewed my curiosity, that I had to read this book.

The book is wonderfully detailed in over 300 pages, giving precise descriptions and information on the exercise of reading. When we read, we learn and gain knowledge.

The mind is a place where ideas and thoughts connect to gain knowledge hence, knowledge grows as learning occurs in the mind. For this sequence of learning to occur, active reading has to take place. Active reading is indispensable to accomplishing any kind of reading.

Also, the authors identified four levels of reading and each level is characterised by the effort put into reading a piece of text. The first is Elementary reading, which is the type of reading everyone learns at nursery school, mostly basic reading of the alphabet and pronunciation.

This reading is simple and everyone who has gone through primary education can do it.

The second level is Inspectional reading, which is merely reading to gain information, not to learn something. It is effortless reading such as reading the newspaper and reading Twitter tweets.

This level of reading is further divided into two kinds: I - Skimming or pre-reading and II - Superficial reading. The authors went in dept into this level of reading so I won’t talk much about them here.

Analytical reading is the third level of reading and the most important level as given by the authors. For anyone to be good at reading, mastering this level of reading is vital. It involves consciously identifying the arguments and propositions given by the author and how well they were able to defend them.

It can get complex as you’ll need to assess the author's words with your existing knowledge, kind of like having a conversation with the author whilst reading. We do this when we are trying to understand the author and if his arguments are substantial enough to convince you, the reader.

The authors laid more emphasis on this level of reading than the others because it is the most important level to master to read a book effectively.

The fourth level of reading is Syntopical reading, which is a more elaborate and multidisciplinary level of reading that involves reading multiple texts. This is done when you want to have a deeper understanding of the information in the text, so you read multiple books from different authors, fields and even periods.

This level is the most fulfilling as well as the most stressful as it cannot be done in a short amount of time.

So there you have it, how to read a book. If you are interested in knowing more about the book, don’t hesitate to check it out. Reading this book was so fulfilling that I can confidently say I know how to read a book better.

A quote cited in the book that I think says it all is by Francis Bacon

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Tell me what you think about it and share your comments.

Have a splendid week ahead.

Dee.