How to Read a Book

by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren 

(1972, Simon & Schuster)

That we humans can look at marks another human has made and glean meaning is a mystical phenomenon.  I applaud Mortimer Adler and Charles Von Doren for parsing this phenomenon called reading and creating a structure that I can look through to assess and improve my reading competence.

The goal of the authors is to provide tools and promote skills that the reader can use to become a more demanding, active participant in fielding an author’s terms, propositions, and arguments and, ultimately, for the reader to enter into The Great Conversation.

The authors accomplish their task by defining four levels of reading, assuming that the reader has attained Level 1, and giving the reader tools for pursuing the other three reading Levels. Their tools have been forged in Mortimer’s labor of love with Classic Books and consequently their main focus are books dealing with the understanding of ideas and phenomenon.

Personally, I was initially excited about this book, anticipating it could make me a more efficient reader! It would provide me with a new perspective for thinking about reading as well as tools that I can use to ‘make the book my own’. I was ready for the work needed to learn and improve my reading skills.

My excitement was dampened a bit by the long windedness of their expositions.  My enthusiasm was further diminished by the dogmatic tone of the prose. The root of my discomfort with the book is Mortimer’s lumping of ‘should do’ with ‘how to do’ in his definition of a practical book. But remembering that this book is a product of the 1930s, a time when this dogmatic pedagogy was the norm, I need to get over my twenty-first century mindset.

With that in mind, I would recommend this book to those interested in The Great Conversation, those looking for a book that embodies the Trivium, and to first year college students. I wish someone had influenced me to read this when I started college.

Outline of: How to Read a Book

4 Levels of Reading:

1. Elementary Reading (10 pages. These numbers suggest what the authors consider important )
1. What does the sentence say?
2. Inspectional reading (14 pages)
1. What is the book about?
2. What is the structure of the book?
3. What are its parts?
4. What kind of a book is it?
3. Analytical reading (132 pages)
1. A thorough, complete reading.
2. The reader asks many, organized questions.
3. Reading for the sake of understanding.
4. The reader makes the book his/her own.
4. Syntopical reading (28 pages)
1. Comparative reading.
2. Reading many books and placing them relative to each other.
3. As  a foundation for original thinking (sum greater than parts)

Level 1, Elementary reading

1. Focus: What does the sentence mean?

        Stages of learning to read:

1. Reading readiness (pre-school and kindergarten)
1. Good vision and hearing
2. Ability to recognize letters and the concept of ‘word’
3. Ability to speak clearly
4. Ability to use several sentences in correct order
5. Ability to sustain attention
6. Ability to follow directions
2. Word mastery (first grade)
1. Sight words (300-400 during first year)
2. Learn contextual clues
3. Read simple books independently
3. Vocabulary growth and context skill (by end of fourth grade)
1. building Vocabulary
2. skill in discovering meaning of unfamiliar words via context
3. reading for different purposes and in different areas of content
4. functional literacy
4. Refining and enhancing skills (by end of eighth or ninth grade)
1. carry over concepts from one reading to another

Level 2, Inspectional reading

1. Two types of inspectional reading:
1. systematic skimming (pre-reading)
1. Title page and preface (What is scope and aim of book? )
2. Table of Contents (How is the book structured)
3. Index (look for crucial terms)
4. Read the dust cover
5. “look now at chapters that seem to be pivotal to its argument”
6. Skim the book, dipping in here and there
2. Superficial reading
1. read through without stopping (first reading)

Level ‘How to be a demanding reader’ (Since reading is an ‘organic’ process, it doesn’t lend itself into a strict ‘leveling’ structure. The authors demonstrate this by including the following “Level 3” tools under the “Level 2” umbrella.)

1. Active reading: 4 basic questions:
1. What is the book about?
2. What is being said, and how?
1. Main ideas
2. Assertions
3. Arguments
3. What’s true?
4. So what?
1. Why does the author think its important to know these things?
2. Is it important to you?
2. Tools to help answer the questions:
1. underlining major points
2. vertical lines in margin to identify supporting prose
3. asterisk to identify the 10 to 12 most important statements/passages
4. numbers to identify sequence of statements in an argument
5. circling key words or phrases
6. recording questions and/or answers in the margin
3. 3 kinds of note-making
1. structural note-making as part of inspectional reading:
1. what kind of book is it?
2. what’s it about?
3. what’s the structure used to develop conception or understanding
2. conceptual note-making
1. what’s true?
2. so what
3. dialectic note-making
1. what’s the shape of the discussion?

Level 3, Analytical reading rules:

    I. The first stage: rules for finding what a book is about:

1. You must know what kind of book you’re reading as early as possible
1. should know this from beginning steps of inspectional reading
2. practical versus theoretical books
1. theoretical books teach ‘that’ something is the case
1. history: a chronotopic narrative of past events, trends, and movements
2. science: laws or generalization on the nature of matter and forces
3. philosophy: seeks general truths about man 
2. practical books teach ‘how’ to do something
1. (Mortimer includes ‘should do’ in his definition of practical and thus drags morals into this arena. Maybe the classification system needs a third division. He even segregates this aspect and labels it ‘normative practical’)
2. State the unity of the whole book in a short paragraph (as brief as possible)
3. Outline the book, identifying its major parts in order and their relationship.
4. Define the problem(s) the author is trying to solve.

  II. The second stage: rules for interpreting a book’s content:

5. Come to terms with the author (it’s amusing to me that Mortimer rails against using ambiguity in practical books and decides to use this double sided phrase) so that you are the same page relative to his key words.
6. Identify the author’s most important sentences in order to understand his main propositions.
7. Look for the author’s arguments in his sequencing of sentences.
8. Determine which problem(s) the author solved and which one(s) he didn’t. Determine if the author was aware of his failures, if any.

  III. The third stage: rules for criticizing a book as a communication of knowledge:

     A. General maxims of Intellectual Etiquette:

9. Don’t criticize the book until you understand it (Adler dictates that the reader must understand before he can agree, disagree, or suspend judgement. His logic is flawless, unfortunately it doesn’t account for us readers that arrive at understanding by means of our disagreement.)
10. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously.
11. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.

     B. Special criteria for points of criticism:

12. Show where the author is uninformed.
13. Show where the author is misinformed.
14. Show where the author is illogical.
15. Show where the author’s analysis is incomplete.

Level 4, Syntopical reading:

  I. Survey the field to prepare for syntopical reading

1. Create a tentative bibliography of your subject (topic)
2. Inspect all of the books in your bibliography to determine which are germane

        The role of inspectional reading in syntopical reading:

1.  Allows a review of all books in your bibliography
2. Determine if a book has something important to say about the topic
3. Identify books ‘worthy’ of syntopical reading

  II.  The five steps of syntopical reading:

1. Finding the relevant passages: This entails a second inspection process aimed at identifying passages germane to your needs. Unless very skillful, keep the two inspectional readings separate. In this second skimming,  focus on finding out how the book can be useful in your topic, not in understanding the author’s purpose in writing it.
2. Bringing the authors to terms: You define the terms and ‘force’ the author to use them. “Syntopical reading . . . to a large extent [is] an exercise in translation”, i.e, imposing common terminology. 
3. Getting the questions clear: “We are faced with the task of establishing a set of neutral propositions as well.”
1. Does the phenomenon you are investigating exist in the book? Does the idea that you are investigating have a certain character that can be queried via the book? 
2. How is the phenomenon known or how does the idea manifest itself? 
3. What are the consequences of the answers to these questions?
4. Defining the issues. 
5. Analyzing the ‘discussion’.