by Mortimer J. Adler, Buy it here

Summary

Still formulating summary, but holy shit. I’ve been reading books wrong for years.

Notes

As Pascal observed three hundred years ago, “When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.”

But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.

There is a difference between retaining new information and learning.

The second sense is the one in which a person tries to read something that at first he does not completely understand. Here the thing to be read is initially better or higher than the reader. The writer is communicating something that can increase the reader’s understanding. Here by “learning” is meant understanding more, not remembering more information.

What are the conditions under which this kind of reading—reading for understanding—takes place? There are two. First, there is initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack. Second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree, seldom perhaps fully, but always approaching equality with the writer. To the extent that equality is approached, clarity of communication is achieved.

In short, we can learn only from our “betters.” We must know who they are and how to learn from them.

We do not want to give the impression that facts, leading to increased information, and insights, leading to increased understanding, are always easy to distinguish. And we would admit that sometimes a mere recital of facts can itself lead to greater understanding

Getting more information is learning, and so is coming to understand what you did not understand before. But there is an important difference between these two kinds of learning. To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.

This distinction is familiar in terms of the differences between being able to remember something and being able to explain it.

Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.

If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking and analysis yourself.

The four levels of reading:

  1. Elementary Reading
  2. Inspectional Reading
  3. Part 1: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading
  4. Part 2: Superficial Reading
  5. Analytical Reading
  6. Syntopical Reading

Each higher level includes the one before it. Syntopical includes all three and goes beyond them.

many quite good readers, are unaware of the value of inspectional reading. They start a book on page one and plow steadily through it, without even reading the table of contents. They are thus faced with the task of achieving a superficial knowledge of the book at the same time that they are trying to understand it. That compounds the difficulty.

Francis Bacon once remarked that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

We also want to stress that analytical reading is hardly ever necessary if your goal in reading is simply information or entertainment

Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding

there are two types of inspectional reading. They are aspects of a single skill, but the beginning reader is well-advised to consider them as two different steps or activities. The experienced reader learns to perform both steps simultaneously, but for the moment we will treat them as if they were quite distinct.

Inspectional Reading I: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading…Giving a book this kind of quick once-over is a threshing process that helps you to separate the chaff from the real kernels of nourishment. You may discover that what you get from skimming is all the book is worth to you for the time being. It may never be worth more.

The habit of skimming should not take much time to acquire. Here are some suggestions about how to do it..

  1. LOOK AT THE TITLE PAGE AND, IF THE BOOK HAS ONE, AT ITS PREFACE. Read each quickly. Note especially the subtitles or other indications of the scope or aim of the book or of the author’s special angle on his subject. Before completing this step you should have a good idea of the subject, and, if you wish, you may pause for a moment to place the book in the appropriate category in your mind. What pigeonhole that already contains other books does this one belong in?
  2. STUDY THE TABLE OF CONTENTS to obtain a general sense of the book’s structure; use it as you would a road map before taking a trip. It is astonishing how many people never even glance at a book’s table of contents unless they wish to look something up in it. In fact, many authors spend a considerable amount of time in creating the table of contents, and it is sad to think their efforts are often wasted. It used to be a common practice, especially in expository works, but sometimes even in novels and poems, to write very full tables of contents, with the chapters or parts broken down into many subtitles indicative of the topics covered. Milton, for example, wrote more or less lengthy headings, or “Arguments,” as he called them, for each book of Paradise Lost. Gibbon published his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with an extensive analytical table of contents for each chapter. Such summaries are no longer common, although occasionally you do still come across an analytical table of contents. One reason for the decline of the practice may be that people are not so likely to read tables of contents as they once were. Also, publishers have come to feel that a less revealing table of contents is more seductive than a completely frank and open one. Readers, they feel, will be attracted to a book with more or less mysterious chapter titles—they will want to read the book to find out what the chapters are about. Even so, a table of contents can be valuable, and you should read it carefully before going on to the rest of the book. At this point, you might turn back to the table of contents of this book, if you have not already read it. We tried to make it as full and informative as we could. Examining it should give you a good idea of what we are trying to do.
  3. CHECK THE INDEX if the book has one—most expository works do. Make a quick estimate of the range of topics covered and of the kinds of books and authors referred to. When you see terms listed that seem crucial, look up at least some of the passages cited. (We will have much more to say about crucial terms in Part Two. Here you must make your judgment of their importance on the basis of your general sense of the book, as obtained from steps 1 and 2.) The passages you read may contain the crux—the point on which the book hinges—or the new departure which is the key to the author’s approach and attitude. As in the case of the table of contents, you might at this point check the index of this book. You will recognize as crucial some terms that have already been discussed. Can you identify, for example, by the number of references under them, any others that also seem important?
  4. If the book is a new one with a dust jacket, READ THE PUBLISHER’S BLURB. Some people have the impression that the blurb is never anything but sheer puffery. But this is quite often not true, especially in the case of expository works. The blurbs of many of these books are written by the authors themselves, admittedly with the help of the publisher’s public relations department. It is not uncommon for authors to try to summarize as accurately as they can the main points in their book. These efforts should not go unnoticed. Of course, if the blurb is nothing but a puff for the book, you will ordinarily be able to discover this at a glance. But that in itself can tell you something about the work. Perhaps the book does not say anything of importance—and that is why the blurb does not say anything, either. Upon completing these first four steps you may already have enough information about the book to know that you want to read it more carefully, or that you do not want or need to read it at all. In either case, you may put it aside for the moment. If you do not do so, you are now ready to skim the book, properly speaking.
  5. From your general and still rather vague knowledge of the book’s contents, LOOK NOW AT THE CHAPTERS THAT SEEM TO BE PIVOTAL TO ITS ARGUMENT. If these chapters have summary statements in their opening or closing pages, as they often do, read these statements carefully.
  6. Finally, TURN THE PAGES, DIPPING IN HERE AND THERE, READING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO, SOMETIMES SEVERAL PAGES IN SEQUENCE, NEVER MORE THAN THAT. Thumb through the book in this way, always looking for signs of the main contention, listening for the basic pulsebeat of the matter. Above all, do not fail to read the last two or three pages, or, if these are an epilogue, the last few pages of the main part of the book. Few authors are able to resist the temptation to sum up what they think is new and important about their work in these pages. You do not want to miss this, even though, as sometimes happens, the author himself may be wrong in his judgment. You have now skimmed the book systematically;

Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book’s general theme or idea, alert for anything that will make it clearer. Heeding the suggestions we have made will help you sustain this attitude. You will be surprised to find out how much time you will save, pleased to see how much more you will grasp, and relieved to discover how much easier it all can be than you supposed.

Inspectional Reading II: Superficial Reading: [The] rule is simply this: In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away. You will have a much better chance of understanding it on a second reading, but that requires you to have read the book through at least once.

But when these things are done prematurely, they only impede our reading, instead of helping it. they should have been encouraged to read the play at one sitting and discuss what they got out of that first quick reading. Only then would they have been ready to study the play carefully and closely because then they would have understood enough of it to learn more.

[In] Adam Smith’s classic The Wealth of Nations…If you insist on understanding everything on every page before you go on to the next, you will not get very far. In your effort to master the fine points, you will miss the big points that Smith makes so clearly about the factors of wages, rents, profits, and interest that enter into the cost of things, the role of the market in determining prices, the evils of monopoly, the reasons for free trade. You will miss the forest for the trees. You will not be reading well on any level.

On speeds of reading: Too often, there are things we have to read that are not really worth spending a lot of time reading; if we cannot read them quickly, it will be a terrible waste of time. It is true enough that many people read some things too slowly, and that they ought to read them faster. But many people also read some things too fast, and they ought to read those things more slowly. It should enable you to vary your rate of reading in accordance with the nature and complexity of the material. With regard to rates of reading, then, the ideal is not merely to be able to read faster, but to be able to read at different speeds—and to know when the different speeds are appropriate.

Inspectional reading is accomplished quickly, but that is not only because you read faster, although in fact you do; it is also because you read less of a book when you give it an inspectional reading, and because you read it in a different way, with different goals in mind.

Analytical reading is ordinarily much slower than inspectional reading, but even when you are giving a book an analytical reading, you should not read all of it at the same rate of speed. Every book, no matter how difficult, contains interstitial material that can be and should be read quickly; and every good book also contains matter that is difficult and should be read very slowly.

Fixation and regression habits are wasteful and obviously cut down reading speed. They are wasteful because the mind, unlike the eye, does not need to “read” only a word or short phrase at a time. The mind, that astounding instrument, can grasp a sentence or even a paragraph at a “glance”— if only the eyes will provide it with the information it needs.

Once one learns to stop these habits, one can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him. To do so: Place your thumb and first two fingers together. Sweep this “pointer” across a line of type, a little faster than it is comfortable for your eyes to move. Force yourself to keep up with your hand. You will very soon be able to read the words as you follow your hand. Keep practicing this, and keep increasing the speed at which your hand moves, and before you know it you will have doubled or trebled your reading speed.

But speed diminishes comprehension. Instead, A better formula is this: Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.

Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading. Do not be afraid to be, or to seem to be, superficial. Race through even the hardest book. You will then be prepared to read it well the second time.

The two stages of inspectional reading can both be thought of as anticipations of steps that the reader takes when he reads analytically. The first stage of inspectional reading—the stage we have called systematic skimming—serves to prepare the analytical reader to answer the questions that must be asked during the first stage of that level. Systematic skimming, in other words, anticipates the comprehension of a book’s structure. And the second stage of inspectional reading—the stage we have called superficial reading— serves the reader when he comes to the second stage of reading at the analytical level. Superficial reading is the first necessary step in the interpretation of a book’s contents. Both substages must be completed before we go to analytical reading.

Be a Demanding Reader

Inspectional reading is always active. It is an effortful, not an effortless, undertaking.

Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading. Any questions? No. The art of reading on any level above the elementary consists in the habit of asking the right questions in the right order. There are four main questions you must ask about any book.

  1. WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT AS A WHOLE? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics.
  2. WHAT IS BEING SAID IN DETAIL, AND HOW? You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author’s particular message.
  3. IS THE BOOK TRUE, IN WHOLE OR PART? You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two. You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not. When you understand a book, however, you are obligated, if you are reading seriously, to make up your own mind. Knowing the author’s mind is not enough.
  4. WHAT OF IT? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them? And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further enlightenment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested.

Reading a book on any level beyond the elementary is essentially an effort on your part to ask it questions (and to answer them to the best of your ability). That should never be forgotten. And that is why there is all the difference in the world between the demanding and the undemanding reader. The latter asks no questions—and gets no answers.

You [ must ] have some idea of the book’s truth, in whole or part, and of its significance, if only in your own scheme of things.

Knowing what the four questions are is not enough. You must remember to ask them as you read. The habit of doing that is the mark of a demanding reader. More than that, you must know how to answer them precisely and accurately. The trained ability to do that is the art of reading.

And books that are over your head weary you unless you can reach up to them and pull yourself up to their level.

The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.

;the learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even has to be willing to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying.

Notetaking on steroids:

  1. UNDERLINING—of major points; of important or forceful statements.
  2. VERTICAL LINES AT THE MARGIN—to emphasize a statement already underlined or to point to a passage too long to be underlined.
  3. STAR, ASTERISK, OR OTHER DOODAD AT THE MARGIN—to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or dozen most important statements or passages in the book. You may want to fold a corner of each page on which you make such marks or place a slip of paper between the pages. In either case, you will be able to take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it to the indicated page, refresh your recollection.
  4. NUMBERS IN THE MARGIN—to indicate a sequence of points made by the author in developing an argument.
  5. NUMBERS OF OTHER PAGES IN THE MARGIN—to indicate where else in the book the author makes the same points, or points relevant to or in contradiction of those here marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together. Many readers use the symbol “Cf ” to indicate the other page numbers; it means “compare” or “refer to.”
  6. CIRCLING OF KEY WORDS OR PHRASES—This serves much the same function as underlining.
  7. WRITING IN THE MARGIN, OR AT THE TOP OR BOTTOM OF THE PAGE—to record questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raises in your mind; to reduce a complicated discussion to a simple statement; to record the sequence of major points right through the book. The endpapers at the back of the book can be used to make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance.

The front endpapers are better reserved for a record of your thinking. After finishing the book and making your personal index on the back endpapers, turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (you have already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with basic outline and an order of parts. That outline will be the measure of your understanding of the work; unlike a bookplate, it will express your intellectual ownership of the book.

Nevertheless, you are asking important questions about a book when you read it at this level, and it would be desirable, even if it is not always possible, to record your answers when they are fresh in your mind. The questions answered by inspectional reading are: first, what kind of book is it? second, what is it about as a whole? and third, what is the structural order of the work whereby the author develops his conception or understanding of that general subject matter? You may and probably should make notes concerning your answers to these questions, especially if you know that it may be days or months before you will be able to return to the book to give it an analytical reading.

On taking notes at inspectional level: The point to recognize is that these notes primarily concern the structure of the book, and not its substance—at least not in detail. We therefore call this kind of note-making structural.

during an analytical reading, you will need to give answers to questions about the truth and significance of the book. The notes you make at this level of reading are, therefore, not structural but conceptual. They concern the author’s concepts, and also your own, as they have been deepened or broadened by your reading of the book.

There is an obvious difference between structural and conceptual note-making. What kind of notes do you make when you are giving several books a syntopical reading—when you are reading more than one book on a single subject? Again, such notes will tend to be conceptual; and the notes on a page may refer you not only to other pages in that book, but also to pages in other books.

That is to make notes about the shape of the discussion—the discussion that is engaged in by all of the authors, even if unbeknownst to them. For reasons that will become clear in Part Four, we prefer to call such notes dialectical.

This is truly amazing. Imagine you are reading a few books about the same subject and having a discussion with the authors and shaping the material.

Any art or skill is possessed by those who have formed the habit of operating according to its rules. Incidentally, not everyone understands that being an artist consists in operating according to rules.

In other words, you must learn to forget the separate acts in order to perform all of them, and indeed any of them, well. But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts. Only then can you put them together to become a good skier.

If only all my tango teachers read understood this

you cannot coalesce a lot of different acts into one complex, harmonious performance until you become expert at each of them.

The person who has had one experience in acquiring a complex skill knows that he need not fear the array of rules that present themselves at the beginning of something new to be learned. He knows that he does not have to worry about how all the separate acts in which he must become separately proficient are going to work together.

The multiplicity of the rules indicates the complexity of the one habit to be formed, not a plurality of distinct habits. The parts coalesce and telescope as each reaches the stage of automatic execution. When all the subordinate acts can be done more or less automatically, you have formed the habit of the whole performance. Then you can think about tackling an expert run you have never skied before, or reading a book that you once thought was too difficult for you.

At the beginning, the learner pays attention to himself and his skill in the separate acts. When the acts have lost their separateness in the skill of the whole performance, the learner can at last pay attention to the goal that the technique he has acquired enables him to reach.

Memorize the last few paragraphs!

Part Two: Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading

The first rule of analytical reading can be expressed as follows: RULE 1. YOU MUST KNOW WHAT KIND OF BOOK YOU ARE READING, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS AS EARLY IN THE PROCESS AS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO READ. You do so by first inspecting the book—giving it an inspectional reading.

The problems dealt with by a book on physics and one on morals are not the same, nor are the methods the writers employ in solving such different problems.

Thus this first rule of analytical reading, though it is applicable to all books, applies particularly to nonfictional, expository works.

Important as reading titles is, it is not enough. The clearest titles in the world, the most explicit front matter, will not help you to classify a book unless you have the broad lines of classification already in your mind.

The title will not tell you, nor all the rest of the front matter, nor even the whole book itself sometimes, unless you have some categories you can apply to classify books intelligently.

Theoratical vs. Practical

The practical has to do with what works in some way, at once or in the long run. The theoretical concerns something to be seen or understood. If we polish the rough truth that is here being grasped, we come to the distinction between knowledge and action as the two ends a writer may have in mind.

What we have in mind here is exemplified by the distinction between pure and applied science, or, as it is sometimes very inaccurately expressed, between science and technology.

Some books or teachers are interested only in the knowledge itself that they have to communicate. This does not mean that they deny its utility, or that they insist that knowledge is good only for its own sake. They simply limit themselves to one kind of communication or teaching, and leave the other kind to other men. These others have an interest beyond knowledge for its own sake. They are concerned with the problems of human life that knowledge can help to solve. They communicate knowledge, too, but always with a view to and an emphasis upon its application.

To make knowledge practical we must convert it into rules of operation. We must pass from knowing what is the case to knowing what to do about it if we wish to get somewhere. This can be summarized in the distinction between knowing that and knowing how. Theoretical books teach you that something is the case. Practical books teach you how to do something you want to do or think you should do. This book is practical, not theoretical. Any guidebook is a practical book. Any book that tells you either what you should do or how to do it is practical. Thus you see that the class of practical books includes all expositions of arts to be learned, all manuals of practice in any field, such as engineering or medicine or cooking, and all treatises that are conveniently classified as moral, such as books on economic, ethical, or political problems. We will later explain why this last group of books, properly called “normative,” constitutes a very special category of practical books.

In describing the art of inspectional reading, we noted that you should not ordinarily stop after reading the front matter of a book and perhaps its index. You should read passages in the book that appear to be of a summary nature. You should also read the beginning and end of the book and of its major parts. This becomes necessary when, as is sometimes the case, it is impossible to classify a book from its title and other front matter. In that case, you have to depend on signs to be found in the main body of the text.

practical book will soon betray its character by the frequent occurrence of such words as “should” and “ought,” “good” and “bad,” “ends” and “means.” The characteristic statement in a practical book is one that says that something should be done (or made); or that this is the right way of doing (or making) something; or that one thing is better than another as an end to be sought, or a means to be chosen. In contrast, a theoretical book keeps saying “is,” not “should” or “ought.” It tries to show that something is true, that these are the facts; not that things would be better if they were otherwise, and here is the way to make them better.

Kinds of theoratical books,

The traditional subdivision of theoretical books classifies them as history, science, and philosophy.

History back. Science forward. Philosophy now.

The essence of history is narration. History is knowledge of particular events or things that not only existed in the past but also underwent a series of changes in the course of time. The historian narrates these happenings and often colors his narrative with comment on, or insight into, the significance of the events.

History is chronotopic. Chronos is the Greek word for time, topos the Greek word for place. History always deals with things that existed or events that occurred on a particular date and in a particular place. The word “chronotopic”

whether a book is philosophical or scientific, how can we tell? There is one criterion that we think always works, although you may have to read a certain amount of the book before you can apply it. If a theoretical book emphasizes things that lie outside the scope of your normal, routine, daily experience, it is a scientific work. If not, it is philosophical.

This does not mean that the philosopher is a pure thinker and the scientist merely an observer. Both have to observe and think, but they think about different sorts of observations. And however they may have arrived at the conclusions that they want to prove, they prove them in different ways, the scientist by pointing to the results of his special experiences, the philosopher by pointing to experiences that are common to all. This difference in method always reveals itself in philosophical and scientific books, and that is how you can tell which sort of book you are reading. If you note the sort of experience that is being referred to as a condition of understanding what is being said, you will know whether the book is scientific or philosophical.

The same is true of history. Historical statements are different from scientific and philosophical ones. A historian argues differently and interprets facts differently. Furthermore, the typical history book is narrative in form. A narrative is a narrative, whether it be fact or fiction. The historian must write poetically, which means he must obey the rules for telling a good story. Whatever other excellences Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding or Newton’s Principia may have, neither is a good story.

Now, just as there is a difference in the art of teaching in different fields, so there is a reciprocal difference in the art of being taught. The activity of the student must somehow be responsive to the activity of the instructor. The relation between books and their readers is the same as that between teachers and their students. Hence, as books differ in the kinds of knowledge they have to communicate, they proceed to instruct us differently; and, if we are to follow them, we must learn to read each kind in an appropriate manner.

X-raying a book

It is an essential part of your apprehension of any book to grasp its structure.

The second rule of analytical reading can be expressed as follows: RULE 2. STATE THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE BOOK IN A SINGLE SENTENCE, OR AT MOST A FEW SENTENCES (A SHORT PARAGRAPH).

Homer’s Odyssey: A certain man is absent from home for many years; he is jealously watched by Poseidon, and left desolate. Meanwhile his home is in a wretched plight; suitors are wasting his substance and plotting against his son. At length, tempest-tossed, he himself arrives; he makes certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them.

The plot of Tom Jones: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.

That, indeed, is the plot of every romance. To recognize this is to learn what it means to say that there are only a small number of plots in the world. The difference between good and bad stories having the same essential plot lies in what the author does with it, how he dresses up the bare bones.

You do not always have to find out the unity of a book all by yourself. The author often helps you. Sometimes, the title is all you have to read. Or the stuff in inspectional reading.

The third rule can be expressed as follows: RULE 3. SET FORTH THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE BOOK, AND SHOW HOW THESE ARE ORGANIZED INTO A WHOLE, BY BEING ORDERED TO ONE ANOTHER AND TO THE UNITY OF THE WHOLE.

This third rule is closely related to the second. A well-stated unity indicates the major parts that compose the whole; you cannot comprehend a whole without somehow seeing its parts. But it is also true that unless you grasp the organization of its parts, you cannot know the whole comprehensively.

The second rule directs your attention toward the unity, the third toward the complexity, of a book.

But these parts are themselves usually complex and have an interior structure you must see. Hence the third rule involves more than just an enumeration of the parts. It means outlining them, that is, treating the parts as if they were subordinate wholes, each with a unity and complexity of its own.

(1) The author accomplished this plan (referring to what we found in rule 2, unity in a short paragraph) in five major parts, of which the first part is about so and so, the second part is about such and such, the third part is about this, the fourth part about that, and the fifth part about still another thing. (2) The first of these major parts is divided into three sections, of which the first considers X, the second considers Y, and the third considers Z. (3) In the first section of the first part, the author makes four points, of which the first is A, the second B, the third C, and the fourth D. And so on and so forth.

You may object to this much outlining. It would take a lifetime to read a book that way. But of course this is only a formula. The rule looks as if it required an impossible amount of work from you. In fact, the good reader does this sort of thing habitually, and hence easily and naturally. He may not write it all out. He may not even at the time of reading have made it all verbally explicit. But if he were called upon to give an account of the structure of the book, he would do something that approximated the formula we have described.

Even when you become more skilled, you will not want to read every book with the same degree of effort. You will not find it profitable to expend all your skill on some books. Even the best readers try to make a fairly close approximation to the requirements of this rule for only a relatively few books. For the most part, they are satisfied with a rough notion of the book’s structure. The degree of approximation varies with the character of the book and your purpose in reading it.

In general, the two rules of reading that we have been discussing look as if they were rules of writing also. Of course they are. Writing and reading are reciprocal, as are teaching and being taught.

We can summarize all of this by recalling the old-fashioned maxim that a piece of writing should have unity, clarity, and coherence. That is, indeed, a basic maxim of good writing. The two rules we have been discussing in this chapter relate to writing that follows that maxim. These two rules, therefore, can be used to distinguish well made books from badly made ones.

RULE 4. FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR’S PROBLEMS WERE.

This rule really repeats in another form what you have already done if you have applied the second and third rules. But it is a useful repetition because it throws the whole and its parts into another light.

You should be able to state the main question that the book tries to answer, and you should be able to state the subordinate questions if the main question is complex and has many parts. You should not only have a fairly adequate grasp of all the questions involved but should also be able to put the questions in an intelligible order. Which are primary and which secondary and in which order to they should be answered.

If you know the kinds of questions anyone can ask about anything, you will become adept in detecting an author’s problems. They can be formulated briefly: Does something exist? What kind of thing is it? What caused it to exist, or under what conditions can it exist, or why does it exist? What purpose does it serve? What are the consequences of its existence? What are its characteristic properties, its typical traits? What are its relations to other things of a similar sort, or of a different sort? How does it behave? These are all theoretical questions. What ends should be sought? What means should be chosen to a given end? What things must one do to gain a certain objective, and in what order? Under these conditions, what is the right thing to do, or the better rather than the worse? Under what conditions would it be better to do this rather than that? These are all practical questions.

4 rules completions is sage I of analytical reading: It is important at this point to recognize that these first four rules are connected and form a group of rules having a single aim. Together, they provide the reader who applies them with a knowledge of a book’s structure. When you have applied them to a book, or indeed to anything fairly lengthy and difficult that you may be reading, you will have accomplished the first stage of reading it analytically.

You should not take the term “stage” in a chronological sense…rules. The practiced reader accomplishes all of these stages at once.

Another way to say this is that applying these first four rules helps you to answer the first basic question about a book. You will recall that that first question is: What is the book about as a whole?

THE FIRST STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING, OR RULES FOR FINDING WHAT A BOOK IS ABOUT 1.Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. 2.State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. 3.Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. 4.Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.

Coming to terms.

Stage II in analytical reading. Remember stages are not chronological, you may do all stages in one analytical reading.

RULE 5. FIND THE IMPORTANT WORDS AND THROUGH THEM COME TO TERMS WITH THE AUTHOR.

Rule 5 & stage II, the aim of which is not the outlining of a book’s structure but the interpretation of its contents or message. The other rules for this stage, to be discussed in the next chapter, are like this one in an important respect. They also require you to take two steps: a step dealing with the language as such, and a step beyond the language to the thought that lies behind it.

The main point [of words & terms distinction] is that one word can be the vehicle for many terms, and one term can be expressed by many words. Let us illustrate this schematically in the following manner. The word “reading” has been used in many senses in the course of our discussion. Let us take three of these senses: By the word “reading” we may mean (1) reading to be entertained, (2) reading to get information, and (3) reading to achieve understanding. Now let us symbolize the word “reading” by the letter X, and the three meanings by the letters a, b, and c. What is symbolized in this scheme by Xa, Xb, and Xc, are not three words, for X remains the same throughout. But they are three terms, on the condition, of course, that you, as reader, and we, as writers know when X is being used in one sense and not another.

Not all the words an author uses are important. Better than that, you can be sure that most of his words are not. Only those words that he uses in a special way are important for him, and for us as readers. This is not an absolute matter, of course, but one of degree. Words may be more or less important.

From your point of view as a reader, therefore, the most important words are those that give you trouble. It is likely that these words are important for the author as well. However, they may not be. It is also possible that words that are important for the author do not bother you, and precisely because you understand them. In that case, you have already come to terms with the author. Only where you fail to come to terms have you work still to do.

You cannot locate the key words without making an effort to understand the passage in which they occur. This situation is somewhat paradoxical. If you do understand the passage, you will, of course, know which words in it are the most important. If you do not fully understand the passage, it is probably because you do not know the way the author is using certain words. If you mark the words that trouble you, you may hit the very ones the author is using specially.

You discover some of the important words by the fact that they are not ordinary for you. That is why they bother you. But is there any other way

The first and most obvious sign is the explicit stress an author places upon certain words and not others. He may do this in many ways. He may use such typographical devices as quotation marks or italics to mark the word for you. He may call your attention to the word by explicitly discussing its various senses and indicating the way he is going to use it here and there. Or he may emphasize the word by defining the thing that the word is used to name.

When you find an author telling you how a particular word has been used by others, and why he chooses to use it otherwise, you can be sure that word makes a great difference to him.

A word may have many meanings.

The answer (to: How does one find out what the meanings are?) is that you have to discover the meaning of a word you do not understand by using the meanings of all the other words in the context that you do understand. This must be the way, no matter how merry-go-roundish it may seem at first.