How to Read a Book

By Quinton Howitt

This may seem like the kind of book a primary school child should be delving into, but the fact is that most people do not know the finer arts of mastering the contents of a book; especially monstrous theological and biblical works.

I know what it feels like to read these books and at the end, to forget just about everything you have read. Talk about soul destroying. As a result, I began looking for some resource which could aid me in extracting the most out of a book. I eventually found a book entitled How to read a book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren, which quite literally changed my life. It is a classic work first written around 1945. This piece of work is a brief summary of some of the steps mentioned in this book which I found most helpful.1

The points which I am going to share with you will have to be practiced over and over because learning to read a book is a skill. Think of the skill of carpentry. If you are not a carpenter, you dont just decide one day that you want to carve a statue of King David and then expect a masterpiece to come out of the process by the end of the day. No! This sort of skill would take hundreds, if not thousands of hours to develop. Reading professionally is no less arduous. I am telling you this to prewarn you that you are going to have to work hard to perfect this skill. But like Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel, the reward is worth the effort.

Okay! Enough babbling; you have just signed up for a course on how to become a book detective.

1 I suggest that if you want to become a master at reading books, that you purchase a copy of this book you

wont be sorry!

HOW TO READ A BOOK

In a nutshell
Inspectional Reading Skimming Title Page and Preface Table of Contents Index Publishers Blurb Chapters Page through the Book Superficial Reading What is the book About? What is being Said and How? Is this book True? Why is it Significant? Analytical Reading Stage One Unity of the book Major Parts Minor Parts Problem/s Stage Two Key Words and Terms Main Propositions Main Arguments Problems Solved??

There are numerous levels of reading; the book covers a whole bunch of them. I am going to pick up on two of them, viz. Inspectional and Analytical Reading.

Inspectional Reading

There are two types of Inspectional Reading, but both are actually part of one skill set: 1) Skimming or Pre-reading a book and 2) Superficial Reading. Both are designed to help you figure out what the authors main contentions are.

Skimming

1. Look at the title page and preface of the book Read quickly focusing on subtitles which will help you to identify the aim of the book. When you have finished this step, you must be able to answer the question, What is the subject of this book?

2. Scrutinize the table of contents You are looking to identify the structure of the book it is like looking at a road map before driving the route.

3. Check the index of the book The index will usually give a quick idea of the range of topics covered in the book as well as the kinds of books the author has referred to. Look for any key terms. They are usually the ones which have the most page references next to them. Briefly look at a few of the references to try and establish what the authors angle on the topic is. Another reason for doing this is that if you know your authors in a particular field, you will quickly identify whether this author has done his research. You dont want to waste your time on a flimsy work.

4. Read the publishers blurb. Many folk ignore this section, but the author/s, with the help of the publishing companies marketing department, will very often try to capture the main points of their book.

5. Look at the chapters. Try to establish those chapters which are pivotal to the author/s arguments. Very often, a chapter will have an opening and closing summary statement, read these very carefully.

6. Page through the book. Read a paragraph here and there or a few pages in sequence. But guard against going over board.

All of these steps should not take you more than an hour.

Superficial Reading

The rule is simple; when 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.

Your focus here must be on the things you do understand, do not focus on paragraphs, footnotes, comments and references. You will have plenty of time to analyze the book in depth at a later stage.

The aim of this second step in inspectional reading is to gain and understanding of the BIG PICTURE. Three blind people were asked to explain what an elephant looked like. The first went and felt the stomach or side of the elephant. Oh, the first said! An elephant is like the rough wall of my house. The second went and felt the elephants leg. No way! An elephant is like a tall column. The third was led to the tale of the elephant. You have both got it wrong! An elephant is a piece of rope. Do you see how you can completely miss the BIG PICTURE?

You will want to keep certain questions in mind as you perform this task. I actually prefer to have them on paper next to me because I struggle to remember them while reading.

1. What is the book about as a whole? What is the main theme of the book and how does the author take this theme and subdivide it into its subordinate themes?

2. What is being said in detail and how? What are the main idea/s, assertion/s, and argument/s?

3. Is this book true in whole or part? You have to be able to answer the first 2 questions before you do justice to this one?

4. What of it? Why is it significant? Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important for you to know them?

You will find that Inspectional Reading tends to provide more accurate answers to the first two questions than to the last two.

Questions are supposed to be answered, so make sure that you answer them, otherwise all your efforts will be fruitless. One of the problems of blasting through a book is that your mind begins to wonder, I am professionally skilled at this. To minimize wandering, use your finger to lead you across the lines of text and keep a pencil or highlighter nearby. With pencil in hand, begin to answer the questions mentioned above. This will force you to concentrate and drastically improve your memory.

Analytical Reading

Analytical reading is more complex and systematic. To put it another way, if Inspectional reading is the best and most complete reading you can do given a limited period of time, analytical reading is the best and most complete reading you can do given an unlimited period of time.

Analytical reading is certainly not required when reading for pleasure, it is preeminently for the sake of understanding by 1) providing an outline of the structure of the book and 2) interpreting the contents.

These two processes we will call stage one and stage two.

Stage One Analytical Reading

This stage comprises four rules.

1. State the unity of the whole book in a single sentence or at most a paragraph Think of a book as having a skeleton, it is your job to find it.

2. Write down the major parts of the book and show how these are organized into a whole, by being ordered to one another and the unity of the whole. You cannot say that you have understood a book if you can only state the whole, you must be able to state how the many comes together to form the whole, i.e. the whole book is about so and so and such and such. Thankfully, most expository books authors will tell you the unity of their plan in the preface.

3. Specify the major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. This has to do with the complexity of the book. For example, the first part of the book is about so and so, the second is about such and such, the third part is about this, the fourth about that and the fifth still about another thing. Then, the first of these major parts is divided up into three sections, of which the first considers X, the second considers Y, and the third considers Z. The first part of X considers A, the second B.etc.

4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve. Often, the author of a book will start with a question or a set of questions. His book is an effort to try and answer those questions. In this step, you should be able to state the main questions that the book raises and tries to answer, and you should be able to state the subordinate questions if the main question is very complex and comprises many parts.

If you know the kinds of questions anyone can ask about anything, you will become skilled 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.

This list of questions is far from being exhaustive, but it does represent the types of most frequently asked questions in the pursuit of theoretical or practical knowledge. It may help you discover the problems a book has tried to solve.

You have completed the first stage of analytical reading when you can truly state what the book is about and outline its structure.

The second stage of analytical reading also involves four steps.

Stage Two Analytical Reading

1. Find the important key words and through them come to terms with the author. A term is a basic element of communicable knowledge. A term is not just a word, at least not a word without further qualification. As I am sure you are aware, the same word can have a variety of meanings, and if the author and reader interpret the word as having different meanings, words have passed between them but they have not come to terms. For example, if you are reading a book about the Kingdom of God and you understand the Kingdom of God to mean heaven or some other geographical location, whereas the author intends it to mean the rule and reign of God, you are going to be confused and clash with the author. Therefore, for communication and understanding to be successful, both parties must use the same words with the same meaning, i.e. come to terms.

There are various methods one can use to identify important key words. First, they are usually the words that give one trouble. Second, they are the words which the author tends to emphasize or explicitly stresses. Third, look for certain typographical devices like quotation marks, italics, underlining etc. Fourth, look for word/s where the author discusses their different shades of meaning. Fifth, look for words which the author makes an effort to define.

2. Grasp the authors main propositions. A proposition is a declaration. It is an expression of the authors judgment about something. He either believes something to be true or false. Propositions are the answers to questions, a declaration of knowledge or opinion. The best ways to test whether you understand the authors proposition/s are 1) to state them in your own words and 2) exemplify the general truth by referring to a particular instance of it.

3. Know the authors main arguments. There are three things to keep in mind here. First, every argument involves a number of statements. Some of these statements will explain why you should accept a conclusion the author has made as true. Note that if you find the conclusion first, look for the reasons. If you find the reasons first, look in which direction they lead. Second, look carefully at what things the author says he has to assume, what he says can be proved or evidenced, and what need not be proved because it is self-evident.

Arguments usually start with various assumptions shared by the author and his readers or with self evident propositions.

4. Establish which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not. Go back to the problems the author identified and check to see which ones he was able to solve and which not. Also look to see if new problems or questions were raised in the process.