# Shortform - How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (Highlights) ![rw-book-cover|256](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/default-book-icon-1.a08c56e2fedd.png) ## Metadata **Cover**:: https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/default-book-icon-1.a08c56e2fedd.png **Source**:: #from/readwise **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Status**:: #x **Authors**:: [[Shortform]] **Full Title**:: How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler **Category**:: #books #readwise/books **Category Icon**:: 📚 **Highlighted**:: [[2021-09-06]] **Created**:: [[2022-09-26]] ## Highlights ### 1-Page Summary #### Part 1: The Premise of How to Read - This type of reading expands your understanding and increases your reading skills. (Page 2) ^test This means "Reading for comprehension". (Highlights of:: [[Calibre 363 - Mortimer J. Adler et al. - How to Read a Book - Shortform Summary|Mortimer J. Adler et al. - How to Read a Book - Shortform Summary]]) - The authors believe there are two types of active reading ... 1. Reading to collect facts. ... 2. Reading for comprehension. (Page 2) ##### 4 Key Questions to Answer While You’re Reading - - What is the overall message or theme of the book? This should be a quick synopsis, not a detailed summary. - How does the author’s argument unfold? - What are the main principles and supporting evidence? - Is the author’s argument valid? Provide evidence to support your opinions. - What are the implications? If you agree with the author’s argument, how will you act on it? (Page 3) ##### A Fifth Question: The Limits of a Good Idea - What are the limits of the author’s good ideas? W hat would happen if everyone followed this advice all the time? (Page 3) #### Part 2: Elementary and Inspectional Reading - According to the authors, inspectional reading is a skimming of the book to understand its main points and its structure. It aims to gain the best understanding of the book in a limited time (the authors advise setting a target for 15 minutes to comprehend a 300-page book). (Page 4) - you can make the most of reading it inspectionally by putting the book’s ideas into practice immediately in your daily life. (Page 4) #rl ##### Techniques for Inspectional Reading - Read the title. (Page 4) - Read the preface and the blurb (Page 4) - Read the table of contents. (Page 4) - Scan the index for a range of topics covered. More important topics will have more pages. (Page 4) - Find the main chapters of the book, and read the summary areas of those chapters. (Page 4) - Flip through the book to get a general sense of the book’s pacing and how the author’s argument will unfold. (Page 4) - To take advantage of these new resources, try reading the top Amazon reviews of the book or scanning through one of our book guides to get a sense of the book’s main arguments. Additionally, you may want to read the book’s introduction and spend time looking at any charts, graphs, or images (Page 4) #rl - According to the authors, the aim of analytical reading is to, without imposing any time restraints, gain the best understanding of the book possible. Not only should you aim to understand what is being said, but you should also develop a personal opinion about its validity. (Page 5) - This requires finding out what problems the author is trying to solve and what questions the book tries to answer. (Page 5) - This task is a bit more complicated for fiction works, as different readers can come away with different understandings of the author’s intent. (Page 5) ##### How to Find Keywords - Keywords are meaningful words or phrases that are used often and convey a wealth of information. (Page 5) ##### How to Find Key Sentences - After identifying keywords, Adler and Van Doren recommend finding the author’s leading propositions in her most important sentences. (Page 5) - How do you find keywords? ... First, a word is probably important if the author deliberately uses it differently than other writers do (particularly if the author makes a point to explain why those other writers’ definitions are incorrect or incomplete). Second, if you struggle to understand how an author is using a particular word, that’s a sign that the word is important (Page 5) - Pay attention to words that confuse you, rather than words that grab your interest. (Page 6) - if your goal is to better understand the author’s ideas, your time is better spent wrestling with sentences you don’t immediately understand. (Page 6) ##### Criticizing a Book - when criticizing, your job is to determine which of her questions the author has answered, which she has not, and decide if the author knew she had failed to answer them. (Page 6) - If you interrupted the author at each sentence to say she’s wrong, you’re not having a conversation that can lead to learning. (Page 6) - Therefore, you must finish the other tasks above (outlining the book, defining main terms, understanding the main arguments) before criticizing. (Page 6) - However, if you’re new to the book’s subject, you should be especially cautious about deciding you understand because the less you know about a subject, the more likely you are to overestimate your understanding. This is the essence of the Dunning-Kruger effect.) (Page 6) - criticizing a book means to comment, “I agree,” “I disagree,” or “I suspend judgment. (Page 7) - A discussion isn’t something to be won: It’s an opportunity to discover the truth. (Page 7) - Only agree with the author if you’ve fully evaluated their work; don’t just assume the author is right because they’re smart. (Page 7) - As you read, earnestly try to take the author’s point of view. (Page 7) - In Difficult Conversations, authors Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen offer advice for navigating these types of conversations: (Page 7) #rl - Remember that our individual experiences shape how we see the world. That means that whatever the author is saying probably isn’t meant as an attack on your principles or your identity; it’s a reflection of their own life experiences. (Page 7) - Acknowledge and express the feelings that come up as you read (Page 7) - Try out the “And Stance,” in which you acknowledge that several things can be true at once. (Page 7) #### Part 4: Comparative Reading - Comparative reading aims to compare books and authors to one another, to model dialogues between authors that may not be in any one of the books. (Page 8) - 1. Create a total bibliography of works that may be relevant to your subject. (Page 8) starred - look for a primer or brief history of your subject. (Page 8) - 2. Inspect all of the books on your bibliography to decide which are relevant to your subject, and to better define the subject. (Page 8) - 3. Go through each book on your list and mark specific chapters or passages you intend to use. (Page 8) - Keep in mind that only a portion of any given book may be relevant to your purposes. (Page 8) - You may use a syntopicon that organizes passages across works by subject, like Great Books of the Western World. (Shortform note: The “Syntopicon'' is a directory of “Great Ideas'' that includes every reference to those ideas across 431 “Great Books.” I (Page 8) - 4. Develop a set of common terms and rephrase each author’s argument in that language. (Page 8) - 5. Develop a set of questions that each author provides answers to. (Page 8) - 6. Get a sense of the complexity of the issues. (Page 9) - If their answers are vastly different, it probably means that your question represents a particularly contentious issue in their field. (Page 9) - Another clue that you’ve stumbled on a contentious issue is if a lot of literature is published on that topic in a short amount of time (Page 9) - 7. Order the questions and issues to throw maximum light on the subject. (Page 9) - Show how the questions are answered differently and say why. (Page 9) - Define your inclusion criteria. Literature reviews have strict inclusion criteria to help determine which sources to use. (Page 9) - Create a table to keep track of different authors’ viewpoints. This will help you keep all your information in one place as you work through your bibliography. You can even color code authors who are in favor of a certain issue or against it. (Page 9) - Analyze the quality of your source. For scientific topics, researchers can do this mathematically by analyzing effect size and statistical significance. (Page 9) ### Shortform Introduction - How to Read a Book is the classic guide to reading effectively. It teaches how to understand the crux of a book within 15 minutes, how to analyze a book intelligently, and how to synthesize ideas from multiple books. (Page 11) - How to Read a Book was one of the first books to explicitly teach the art of reading for comprehension rather than speed. (Page 12) - Its modern successors include Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Steve Leveen’s The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, and Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why, all of which focus primarily on works of fiction (Page 12) #rl - In 1997, Adler wrote a companion volume to How to Read a Book entitled How to Speak How to Listen, in which he adapts his methodology for close reading to the art of spoken conversation. (Page 12) #rl ### Part 1: The Premise of How to Read - The authors feel that the best books challenge your reading ability and force you to grow as a reader. They also believe that to be well-read is not to have read a large number of books, but to have a highquality understanding of good books. (Page 15) #### 4 Key Questions to Answer While You’re Reading - What is the overall message or theme of the book? This should be a quick synopsis, not a detailed summary. How does the author's argument unfold? What are the main principles and supporting evidence? Is the author's argument valid? Provide evidence to support your opinions. What are the implications? If you agree with the author’s argument, how will you act on it? (Page 15) - As you read, you may also want to ask a crucial question not posed by the authors: “What are the limits of the author’s good ideas? What would happen if everyone followed this advice all the time?” It’s rare that an idea is applicable in all situations. (Page 16) - Underline, highlight, or draw a symbol to mark major points (Page 16) - Sketch out the author’s argument using numbers in the margins (for example, Point 1, Subpoint 2, Evidence 1, and so on) (Page 16) - Refer to other pages in the margin. (Page 16) - Write questions in the margins next to confusing or unclear points. (Page 16) - After finishing the book, outline the content of the book. (Page 16) - Adler believes so strongly in the importance of marking up books that he published a pamphlet called “How to Mark a Book'' in 1941 (Page 16) - The Four Levels of Reading (Page 16) - Elementary (Page 17) - Inspectional (Page 17) - This is a careful skimming of the book to understand its main points and its structure. (Page 17) - Analytical (Page 17) - This is the most thorough way to read and understand a single book. (Page 17) - “Syntopical” or Comparative (Page 17) - This aims to compare books and authors to one another in order to fully understand a single question or idea. (Page 17) - According to the authors, the vast majority of books will not strain your ability to read analytically. They deliver information that fits your current framework, or they are meant to be read for entertainment. Then, there is a smaller class of books that can give you more than entertainment or information—they can actually help you live a better life. These are the books that you can read analytically (Page 17) - Many self-improvement books become popular because they are easy to read and sound like good ideas, not because they can actually help you (Page 17) - live a different or better life (Page 18) - There is a final, highest class of books, perhaps fewer than a hundred, that you can return to over and over again and get something new out of them each time. The authors believe you should seek out these books, for they will teach you the most. (Page 18) - To identify these books, the authors suggest you consider the desert island question—which 10 books would you take with you if you could never read any book ever again? (Page 18) - Part 2: Elementary Reading (Page 20) - More critical than speed reading, according to the authors, is being able to modulate your reading speed dynamically. Read certain types of texts (like fiction) faster than others that contain denser content, like science textbooks. Within a text, read key points more slowly than fluff to give yourself time to think through the logic. (Page 20) - Part 3: Inspectional Reading (Page 22) - Instead, they advise reading difficult books straight through, without pausing to look anything up. Even if you understand less than 50% of the information, this cursory reading will improve your comprehension the second time around, ultimately saving time. (Page 23) - He’d circle words he didn’t know, finish the book, then go back and look those words up after reading. (Page 23) - Amazon organizes its “Books” department into 32 subcategories. (Page 25) - Part 4: Analytical Reading (Page 26) - The authors argue that analytical reading consists of four components: Understand the author—her intentions, problems, and goals. Understand the author’s logical arguments. Use external resources, but only after you struggle through it yourself first. After you understand a book, criticize a book from your own viewpoint, finding areas with which you agree and disagree. (Page 26) - Adler and Van Doren also advise unpacking complicated sentences to find all the propositions the author is making. (Page 28) - According to the authors, once you identify a proposition, you should rephrase it in the way most comfortable to you. This is the best way to verify that you understand it. (Page 28) - Shortform note: To make sure your new understanding really sinks in, try writing down this restatement by hand rather than just thinking it through in your head or typing it on a keyboard. The physical act of writing things down on paper requires more brain connections than typing (Page 28) - According to Adler and Van Doren, until an author supports her principles with reasons, they are merely opinions. You must distinguish between genuine knowledge and mere opinion (Page 29) - To counteract this effect, try intentionally looking for information that disproves your existing beliefs. The Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this technique “negative empiricism.”) (Page 30) - According to Adler and Van Doren, when you agree or disagree, you must justify and provide evidence for your conclusion. Without doing so, you’re merely expressing opinions—you’re not providing a substantive rebuttal to the author’s argument. (Page 32) - Part 5: Reading Approaches for Different Genres (Page 34) - Part 6: Comparative Reading *Pens* (Page 44)