Very few people know how to read books. That’s a pity. Knowing how to read is a skill that completely changes what we can get from a book. At school we learn to read (i.e. understand sentences and paragraphs), but reading a book is much more than that.
Here are some notes from How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. As the authors say:
Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow
I first came across the topic through this talk on the same subject, which I’d also recommend.
Introduction
People read books for many reasons: for pleasure (i.e. fiction), for information1, and for understanding. These notes concern reading for understanding, which requires books that are slightly out of your comfort zone. Reading challenging books is stimulation for the mind and sharpens your critical thinking.
How to read a book
The aim of reading a book is to build up your knowledge of the topic. It’s a multi-step process and takes time. You can think of it as building a house: first you set the foundations and erect a frame; you then build a basic structure that resembles a house; and finally you add detail and finishing to the house.
Here’s how:
- First, try to get a good understanding of its structure and main points by intelligently skimming
- Read the book superficially to get a grasp of the book as a whole and understand the language the author uses. Intelligent skimming and superficial reading are the focus of this blog post.
- Then read it analytically. I’ll cover these in a second blog post.
1. Intelligent skimming
The aim of intelligent skimming is to understand the outline of the book and find the major conclusions. It’s tempting to immediately start reading a book cover-to-cover, but you should set aside time for this exercise.
After reading the title and publisher’s blurb to understand the type of book, you should:
- Read the table of contents. This is a map of the book. It shows you the overall structure and gives you a sense of where the book is going, and what path the author is taking you on.
- Scan the index. This will give you an idea of the topics covered in the book. Pay attention to the number of times a term is referenced in the index - this will help you identify the crucial terms. Look up some of the cited passages - these might contain the crux of the book.
- Read the introduction. Towards the end of the introduction, the author will usually lay out the structure of the book. This will give you an overview of the main arguments of the book and how they flow together
- Understand the main conclusions. At this point, you have an overview of the jargon and the journey the author is taking you on. It should be relatively easy to identify the pivotal chapters to the argument. Read a few paragraphs from them, particularly the end of the chapters, where you’ll find a few short paragraphs summarising the relevant chapter.
- Read the last few pages. The author usually summarises the key arguments of the book at the end. You should now know the author’s key argument and its implications.
- Dip into various parts of the book. Read one or two paragraphs at a time (but not more) to add colour to what you’ve already discovered.
A key question at this point is: does this book deserve more of your time and attention? If not, put it down.
A major point of ‘How to Read a Book’ is that not all books deserve to be read properly. Most popular business books aren’t worth reading in this way. However, they have lots of examples that bring arguments to life in a variety of contexts, so are useful from that perspective. The good thing is that they don’t need your full attention and can be read quickly (i.e. just superficially).
2. Superficial reading
The next step is to read the book superficially. The key here is to read through relatively quickly without stopping to look up unfamiliar words. Similarly, just move on if you don’t fully understand an argument. Major points are usually rehashed later in the book and will become clearer as you progress.
Superficial reading helps you get a good grasp of the book as a whole and lays the foundations for the next stage of reading. This is what the author calls analytical reading, where the major benefits of reading are. I’ll cover this in the next blog post.