How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. AdlerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
What kind of book is this?
This is an expository work; more specifically, it is a practical guidebook.
Rational & Why I read this book
2021 I is set out to become a "better" reader. One metric I had for measuring this, was reading and reviewing 52 books (my 2021 Goodreads challenge) within a year. Another metric was to finally give "How to Read a Book" itself an analytical read, after having read it casually a couple of times already.
The unity of the book — what is the book about as a whole?
This book guides you in becoming a "better" reader, someone who reads to gain wisdom instead of acquiring knowledge or being entertained. In doing so, this book sets forth many nuances (e.g. the kind of the book— theoretical vs. practical, fiction vs. expository) that need to be taken into consideration when reading for "enlightenment"; giving a special focus on the different "levels of reading" that one must master; starting as primitive as how to learn to read in school (elementary reading) and going as advanced as reading multiple books on the same topic at the same time in order to fully grasp a topic and to distill a discourse on it (synoptical reading).
The book's structure
The book has four major parts.
In the first part, after a short introduction on reading and its goals itself, it introduces and explains the 4 "levels" of reading, namely elementary reading (basic reading as learned in school), inspectional reading (systematic skimming or pre-reading), analytical reading, and synoptical reading. All of them are briefly discussed.
In the second part it goes in-depth on the most important level of reading as far as the book is concerned: analytical reading. It shows the various "stages" that are involved in this level, including deep-diving into the matter, "coming to terms" with the author, and criticizing a book fairly, and clearly highlighting the 10 most important rules to follow when reading on this level.
In the third part it shows approaches to different kinds of reading matter; specifically it shows how to read practical books, imaginative literature, stories/plays/poems, history, science & math, philosophy, and social science.
In the fourth part it goes more into detail about synoptical reading - reading multiple books on the same topic at the same time - and ties together the rationale for reading in the first place: the growth of the mind.
One particular lesson
Since I read this analytically, it is really hard to pick one single thing here. One that is short enough to elaborate here is the insight, that different books should be read at different speeds which not merely refers to reading speed in words per minute. Instead, this means some books do not even deserve 10 minutes of skimming while others you should read very deeply, slowly, and many times over the course of your life. Personally, I think to truly understand this lesson you need to first read a lot of books (100+), so that you can experience the big range of quality there is. Else you will probably not even know that most of what you are reading is not worth your time at all.
Judgement & Recommendations - Who should read this?
This is a true classic and — to the best of my knowledge — the definitive book on reading there is. Sure, many years have passed since its publication and it definitely could need a revision, since it does not take into account the advancement in science and technology. But, rather than dismissing it as "dated", I think this book is relevant more than ever. It is a long book and not an easy read, but for everyone that (1) likes to read (2) aims to leverage reading to gain wisdom (3) cares about personal growth (growth of the mind in particular), this is a definitive reading recommendation. Overall, I appoint it a 9 out of 10 (⭑⭑⭑⭑) on my personal rating scale.
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