Book how to read a book mortimer adler

How to Read a Book: The Ultimate Guide by Mortimer Adler

As part of our series on reading, this guide dives into how to read a book using the classical framework provided by Mortimer Adler.

By the time you finish reading, you’ll have a framework for reading at different levels that you can apply right away.

Let’s hit the books and explore the following:

How We Learn To Read

I bet you already know how to read a book. You were taught in elementary school.

But do you know how to read well?

There is a difference between reading for understanding and reading for information.

If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t given much thought to how you read. And how you read makes a massive difference to knowledge accumulation.

A lot of people confuse knowing the name of something with understanding. While great for exercising your memory, the regurgitation of facts without solid understanding and context gains you little in the real world.

A useful heuristic: Anything easily digested is reading for information.

Consider the newspaper, are you truly learning anything new? Do you consider the writer your superior when it comes to knowledge in the subject? Odds are probably not. That means you’re reading for information. It means you’re likely to parrot an opinion that isn’t yours as if you had done the work.

This is how most people read. But most people aren’t really learning anything new. It’s not going to give you an edge, make you better at your job, or allow you to avoid problems.

“Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.”

Learning something insightful requires mental work. It’s uncomfortable. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not learning. You need to find writers who are more knowledgeable on a particular subject than yourself. By narrowing the gap between the author and yourself, you get smarter.

The Four Levels of Reading

Mortimer Adler literally wrote the book on reading. Adler identifies four levels of reading:

How You Read Matches Why You’re Reading

The goal of reading determines how you read. Reading the latest Danielle Steel novel is not the same as reading Plato. If you’re reading for entertainment or information, you’re going to read a lot differently (and likely different material) than reading to increase understanding. While many people are proficient in reading for information and entertainment, few improve their ability to read for knowledge.

Before we can improve our reading skills, we need to understand the differences in the reading levels. They are thought of as levels because you can’t move to a higher level without a firm understanding of the previous one — they are cumulative.

1. Elementary Reading

This is the level of reading taught in our elementary schools. If you’re reading this website, you already know how to do this.

2. Inspectional Reading

We’ve been taught that skimming and superficial reading are bad for understanding. That is not necessarily the case. Using these tools effectively can increase understanding. Inspectional reading allows us to look at the author’s blueprint and evaluate the merits of a deeper reading experience.

There are two sub-types of inspectional reading:

Inspectional reading gives you the gist of things.

Sometimes that’s all we want or need. But sometimes we want more. Sometimes we want to understand.

3. Analytical Reading

Francis Bacon once remarked, “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

You can think of analytical reading as doing that chewing and digesting. This is doing the work.

Analytical reading is a thorough reading.

If inspectional reading is the best you can do quickly, this is the best reading you can do given time.

At this point, you start to engage your mind and dig into the work required to understand what’s being said. I highly recommend you use marginalia to converse with the author.

There are four rules to Analytical Reading

You’ll probably notice that while those sound pretty easy, they involve a lot of work. Luckily the inspectional reading you’ve already done has primed you for this.

After an inspectional read, you will understand the book and the author’s views.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll understand the broader subject. To do that, you need to use comparative reading to synthesize knowledge from several books on the same subject.

4. Syntopical Reading

This is also known as comparative reading, and it represents the most demanding and difficult reading of all. Syntopical Reading involves reading many books on the same subject and comparing and contrasting ideas, vocabulary, and arguments.

This task is undertaken by identifying relevant passages, translating the terminology, framing and ordering the questions that need answering, defining the issues, and having a conversation with the responses.

The goal is not to achieve an overall understanding of any particular book, but rather to understand the subject and develop a deep fluency.

This is all about identifying and filling in your knowledge gaps.

There are five steps to syntopical reading:

Becoming a Demanding Reader

Reading is all about asking the right questions in the right order and seeking answers.

There are four main questions you need to ask of every book:

If all of this sounds like hard work, you’re right. Most people won’t do it. That’s what sets you apart.

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren

If you want to keep learning and discovering, you must know how to make books teach you. There is no limit to the growth and development your mind can sustain once you master the art of reading.

Lawson Blake

Read more posts by this author.

Lawson Blake

Short Summary

A 1940 classic that is the best and most comprehensive guide to the art of reading. It explores the four levels of reading and how to achieve them.

Favorite Quote

«Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not. And books that are over your head weary you unless you can reach up to them and pull yourself up to their level.»

Book Notes

The Art of Reading

There are three possible goals for reading. You’re either reading for information, reading for understanding, or reading for entertainment.

Reading for Information occurs when you read newspapers, magazines, or online articles. The content you consume may increase your store of information or affect your emotional state, but it doesn’t improve your understanding of the material.

Reading for Understanding requires reading material that is initially «superior» to your level of knowledge. There is an inequality in understanding between the writer and reader, but the content is clearly communicated. It’s up to you to overcome the inequality in understanding to learn something.

Reading for Entertainment is self-explanatory. It’s the least demanding kind of reading, so it requires the least amount of effort. Anyone who knows how to read already knows how to read for entertainment.

Since this book is a guide to intelligent reading, it will focus on improving your skill of reading for understanding. Reading to learn can be achieved in two different ways: learning by instruction or learning by discovery.

Learning by Instruction occurs when one person teaches another person through speech or writing. You’re acting on something being communicated to you.

Learning by Discovery is the process of learning something through research, investigation, or by reflection, without being taught.

The art of reading includes all of the same skills involved in learning by discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and an intellect trained in analysis and reflection.

If you want to keep learning and discovering, you must know how to make books teach you. There is no limit to the growth and development your mind can sustain once you master the four levels of reading.

The Levels of Reading

There are four levels of reading. They’re called levels because each one builds on the one before it. They are:

Elementary Reading

Also known as initial reading; it’s learning the basics of reading. It’s learning how to read the words on a page and understanding basic grammar and syntax.

Most people achieve this level of reading in elementary school (hence the name). At this level, the reader asks, «What does this sentence say?»

Inspectional Reading

Characterized by its special emphasis on time, Inspectional Reading is about getting the most out of a book in a given time, often by skimming or pre-reading.

Your aim is to discover whether the book is worth a more careful reading. At this level, the reader asks, «What is this book about?»

Here are some tips on how to skim a book:

While skimming is useful for getting the gist of a book, speed reading is a dubious achievement. It’s only valuable if you have to read a book that’s not really worth reading. Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.

Reading should also be a conversation between you and the author. Marking up a book is an expression of your differences and agreements with the author. There are all kinds of devices you can use for marking up a book intelligently:

But getting the most out of a book doesn’t stop at marking it up. You also want to take notes to help answer any questions you have. The best place for taking notes are on the page or title page.

There are three kinds of notes you can make:

Analytical Reading

The best and most complete reading you can do given unlimited time. It requires asking questions about the contents you’re reading for the sake of understanding. Specifically, there are four questions you should ask any book:

There are 11 rules to analytical reading, which will help you answer the four questions. The first four rules make up the first stage of analytical reading, which is concerned with answering: «What is the book about?»

Rule 1: Know what kind of book you’re reading, preferably before reading it. Most of this should be covered with inspectional reading.

Rule 2: State what the book is about in a single sentence, or at most a few sentences. The purpose is to discover its theme and main point.

Rule 3: Outline the book. The best books have the most intelligible structure, although they’re usually more complex than poorer books.

Rule 4: Find out what the author’s problems were. You want to discover the author’s intentions for writing the book.

The next four rules make up the second stage of analytical reading, which is concerned with answering: «What is being said, and how?»

Rule 5: Determine the author’s key words. These are often the words that give you the most trouble.

Rule 6: Determine what the author is proposing by discovering their most important sentences.

Rule 7: Locate or construct the basic arguments of the book. Ideally, you should be able to state the author’s argument in your own words. If you can’t, then you do not fully understand their argument.

Rule 8: Find out what the author’s solutions are.

The last three rules make up the third and final stage, which is concerned with answering the remaining questions: «Is the book true, in whole or in part?» and if so, «What of it?»

Rule 9: Do not criticize a book until you fully understand it. Do not say you agree or disagree until you can say, «I understand.»

Rule 10: If you disagree with the author, do so reasonably.

Rule 11: Give reasons for any critical judgment you make. Recognize the difference between knowledge and opinion when presenting your judgments.

Syntopical Reading

Also known as comparative reading, this is the highest level of reading you can achieve. You read many books on the same (or similar) subject and construct an analysis of said subject. Syntopical reading has five steps:

Step 1: Find the most relevant passages for your concerns.

Step 2: Establish the terms, and bring the authors to them. Force an author to use your language, rather than using theirs.

Step 3: Make the question you are solving for clear. Frame a set of questions that shed light on your problem while allowing each author to answer.

Step 4: Define the issues between the authors.

Step 5: Analyze the discussion. You want to identify and report the major issues or oppositions through a lens of objectivity. Look at all sides of the argument but take no sides.

Reading for Growth

If you’re reading to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are over your head.

A good book rewards you for trying to read it. It rewards you in two ways: by improving your reading skills and by teaching you about the world and yourself. It also serves to keep your mind alive and growing.

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Как читать книги

Руководство по чтению великих произведений (переиздание)

A Guide to Reading the Great Books

Как читать книги

Руководство по чтению великих произведений (переиздание)

A Guide to Reading the Great Books

Бумажная книга, 12+

отсутствует на складе

Бумажная книга, 12+

О книге

Вы никогда не задумывались, много ли на самом деле понимаете в тексте? Не доводилось ли вам, открыв прочитанную когда-то книгу, с удивлением отмечать, что вы забыли, о чем в ней шла речь, либо в прошлый раз упустили важные нюансы, а то и вовсе иначе понимали написанное?

С момента появления литературы автор и читатель ведут увлекательную игру. Автор посредством текста делится с вами своими мыслями и чувствами. А вы трансформируете вязь букв и знаков препинания в собственные мысли и эмоции. Но совершенно не факт, что они совпадут с авторскими! Изо всей полноты смыслов, заложенных автором в книге, читатель выхватит ровно столько, сколько способен понять. Оттого и разница в восприятии: одни находят какую-либо книгу весьма глубокой, другие — пустой, третьи — заумной.

Чтобы действительно понимать все оттенки смысла, заложенные в словах и фразах, и полностью настроиться на авторскую волну, нужен изрядный читательский багаж, а кроме того, умение читать активно. И именно этого умения многим не хватает. Увы, на гуманитарные науки времени в учебных заведениях отводится все меньше, люди читают все реже, и проблема встает во весь рост: накопленное культурное наследие скоро некому будет оценить. А кроме того, появляются серьезные преграды для самообразования.

Вывод: нужно заново учиться читать. И именно для этого написал эту книгу Мортимер Адлер, американский философ, редактор и преподаватель, всю свою жизнь посвятивший тому, чтобы научить людей любить и понимать книги. Вся она посвящена науке активного, вдумчивого, многоэтапного чтения. Освоив его, вы сможете видеть в художественных книгах сокрытое между строк, слышать музыку слов, ощущать вкус, цвет и запах звуков. А литература нон-фикшн будет приносить вам больше пользы.

Фишки книги

Книга впервые была издана в 1940 году; повторно в прежнем виде, но с новым предисловием, вышла в 1966-м, после чего последовало переработанное издание 1972 года. До сих пор она остается классическим трудом по психологии чтения.

Мортимер Адлер впоследствии стал председателем редакционного совета энциклопедии «Британника».

Почему мы решили издать эту книгу

Потому что проблема неумения правильно читать актуальна в последнее время и для нашей страны.

Для кого эта книга

Для всех людей, которые чувствуют, что от них ускользают нюансы прочитанного, и хотели бы развить свои способности к правильному и многогранному восприятию текста.

Для тех, кто хотел бы сам писать книги так, чтобы быть правильно понятым.

Для тех, кому приходится хотя бы время от времени заниматься редакторской работой.

От автора

Первым подарком судьбы был мой коллега по курсу, поэт Марк Ван Дорен. Он вел дискуссии о поэзии, а я — об истории, науке и философии. Ван Дорен был на несколько лет старше меня, вероятно, честнее, и лучше умел читать. Мне пришлось сравнивать его манеру преподавания со своей, и врать себе я просто не мог. Чтобы понять книгу, я читал не ее, а о ней.

Я задавал вопросы, которые мог сформулировать кто угодно, не читая книгу — любой, кто перелопатил тонны дополнительных материалов, созданных специально для тех, кто не смог или не захотел читать. И наоборот, его вопросы рождались из содержания книги. Казалось, между ним и автором уже завязались доверительные отношения. Каждая книга представляла для него целый мир, бесконечный простор для исследования, и горе тому студенту, что отвечал на вопросы так, словно вместо путешествия туда лишь прочел путеводитель. Различие было слишком очевидным и невыносимым для меня. Оно ни на миг не давало забыть, что я не умею читать.

Вторым подарком судьбы оказалась моя первая группа студентов. Они тут же бросились вдогонку и научились читать энциклопедии, статьи и предисловия к классике не хуже меня. Один из них, ставший впоследствии критиком, проявлял наибольшее рвение. С неиссякаемым восторгом он пускался в обсуждение всевозможных дополнительных материалов, тем самым указывая мне и другим студентам на необходимость говорить о самой книге. Не хочу сказать, что он или кто-то другой умели читать лучше меня. Безусловно, никто из нас, за исключением Ван Дорена, не читал по-настоящему.

Спустя год в роли преподавателя я избавился от иллюзии о своей начитанности. С тех пор я учил студентов читать, шесть лет в Колумбийском университете с Марком Ван Дореном и еще десять лет в Чикагском университете вместе с президентом Робертом М. Хатчинсом. Полагаю, что за эти годы я постепенно научился читать лучше. Я перестал заниматься самообманом или считать себя специалистом. Почему? Из года в год читая одни и те же книги, я каждый раз обнаруживал то же, что и в первый раз: книга казалась мне абсолютно новой. Перечитывая очередную книгу, я говорил себе, что наконец отлично все усвоил, но с каждым последующим прочтением находил неверно понятые места. После нескольких повторений даже самый отсталый человек поймет, что не умеет как следует читать. Конечно, дело мастера боится, но в искусстве чтения, как и в любом другом, для реализации этой пословицы нужно больше практики, чем кажется изначально.

Как читать книги (в кожаном переплете)

Руководство по чтению великих произведений

A Guide to Reading the Great Books

Как читать книги (в кожаном переплете)

Руководство по чтению великих произведений

A Guide to Reading the Great Books

О книге

С момента появления литературы автор и читатель ведут увлекательную игру. Автор посредством текста делится с вами своими мыслями и чувствами. А вы трансформируете вязь букв и знаков препинания в собственные мысли и эмоции. Но совершенно не факт, что они совпадут с авторскими! Изо всей полноты смыслов, заложенных автором в книге, читатель выхватит ровно столько, сколько способен понять. Оттого и разница в восприятии: одни находят какую-либо книгу весьма глубокой, другие — пустой,
третьи — заумной.

Чтобы действительно понимать все оттенки смысла, заложенные в словах и фразах, и полностью настроиться на авторскую волну, нужен изрядный читательский багаж, а кроме того, умение читать активно.

И именно для этого еще в 1940 году написал эту книгу Мортимер Адлер, американский философ, редактор и преподаватель (впоследствии он стал председателем редакционного совета энциклопедии «Британника»), всю свою жизнь посвятивший тому, чтобы научить людей любить и понимать книги. Вся она посвящена науке активного, вдумчивого, многоэтапного чтения. Освоив его, вы сможете видеть в художественных книгах сокрытое между строк, слышать музыку слов, ощущать вкус, цвет и запах звуков. А литература нон-фикшн будет приносить вам больше пользы.

До сих пор эта книга остается классическим трудом по психологии чтения. Но на русский язык переведена впервые.

Почему мы решили выпустить ее в таком оформлении

Потому что она этого заслуживает. Роскошный кожаный переплет с тиснением, выполненный по технологиям XIX века, и особым образом обработанные обрезы придают особую значительность книге, а ее содержание не оставит равнодушным ни одного книгочея и библиофила. Такой подарок не останется незамеченным, и вы не сможете придумать ничего лучшего для истинного любителя книг. Это издание прослужит нескольким поколениям читателей и станет настоящей фамильной ценностью.

Для кого эта книга

Для любого ценителя роскошных изданий. Но самым лучшим подарком она будет для того, кто связан с книгами по роду профессиональной деятельности.

Review: How to Read a Book (Mortimer Adler, Charles Van Doren)

As part of my research on how to bootstrap understanding in a field, I’m reading books that attempt to answer that question. You might think I should have started with that, but it was useful to get a sense of what problems I needed to solve before I looked for the solution.В How to Read a Book (affiliate link) is generally very well regarded in this area and came with a strong recommendation from the CEO of Roam, who I would expect to have pretty good thoughts on learning structure. Nonetheless, I was quite disappointed. It took me a long time to put my disappointment into words, but with the help of someone on Facebook I finally figured it out: How to Read a Book is aimed at a narrower subset of books than it acknowledges. What subset, you might ask? I don’t have a great answer, because the authors clearly consider the subset to be the only books, or the only books worth reading, so they didn’t leave a lot of clues.В

What I can say is that it expects books to follow a rigid structure, and to have a single unifying point (what they call “the unity”). This seems to me to be setting up both the author and the reader to throw out a lot of information because they weren’t expecting to see it or couldn’t fit it into their existing frameworks- reading like a state, in essence. This is not the only thing that makes me think HtRaB is more about being able to understand a book than understand the world, although it’s the only one I can articulate.

How to Read a Book didn’t even attempt to answer my current most important question in reading: How do I know what to save or pay attention to? More attentive reading (including but not limited to note-taking) takes more time and more mental effort. Even if it was free, every additional memory or note eats up space in my brain or exobrain and makes it harder to find other thoughts when I look for them. But I don’t necessarily know how important a piece of information is when I read it. Good pre-reading might help me know how important it is to that particular work, but never to my life as a whole.

HtRaB acknowledges that different works have vastly different returns to attention and you should allocate your reading effort accordingly, but I don’t feel like it gave me guidance for choosing what to pay attention to, and I have a suspicion that if I pressed the point the authors’ answer would be extremely in line with the literary and scientific canon of the 1940s-1970s.

My favorite section of How to Read a Book is also the most mechanically detailed: the algorithm for pre-processing a book (explained in detail here). I don’t know if this was the most useful to me because it was the most detailed or because a teacher once told me skimming was immoral and I needed that to be challenged.

For the meat of reading, How to Read a Book suggests questions to ask but not how to determine the answer. To be fair, this is hard. As I work on my own guide to reading I’m intensely aware of how difficult it is to translate the intentions and external appearance of what I’m doing to inner workings comprehensible to many, or even to other people very similar to myself. I suspect there are people for whom reading these questions causes something to click in their brain and they suddenly start reading better, and that’s great, but it makes the book lucky, not good. Which is nothing to be ashamed of: sometimes a stab at a hard problem is worth more than a perfect solution to an easy one. But HtRaB’s stab did not happen to hit my particular problem, nor contain enough deep models to let me make the stab myself.

My overall impression is that this is one of those books that is helpful if you read it at the right time and pretty meh otherwise, and it was the wrong time for me. I also predicted it would be one of those books that’s notable for founding a genre but goes on to be surpassed by later books that learned from it, but when I looked at Amazon I found very little. There’s lots on speedreading, confusing memorization with learning, and “how to study to pass a test designed by someone else”, and I may end up reading some of those because the field is that sparse, but they’re not what I actually want. So if there’s a work you or someone you trust likes that attempts to answer any of the following questions, please share it:

I’m also interested if you have opinions on any of the following:

So many thanks to my Patreon supporters and the Long Term Future Fund for their support of this research.