(Over 60 diverse thinkers on how to get more from books)
Adler1 was an American philosopher and educator.
He identified in his students a fundamental misunderstanding about reading: they tried to read every book at the same rate, which “may be either too fast or too slow for a particular work, but in any event is wrong for most” (Adler and Van Doren 1972, 315). If we read poor books slowly and carefully we waste our time, neglecting better books. If we read good books too quickly, we fail to comprehend their full value. It is vital to understand, Adler insisted, “how to read some books faster than others” (ibid.). This requires adopting a reading strategy appropriate for a given book.
The strategies Adler suggests are primarily concerned with reading for understanding. They can be adapted to read for entertainment or information, but we will concentrate here on expository works. For such books to be even potentially worth reading there must be an “initial inequality in understanding” between us and the writer. Further, this inequality should be possible for us to overcome to some degree (p. 10). The book should be sufficiently difficult or we will not gain new understanding.
We begin a new book by skimming it systematically, which helps determine in a limited time whether it deserves a deeper reading (p. 32). Is it potentially useful to us: relevant to our interests and sufficiently challenging? We glance at the title page and preface to get the gist of its subject and broadly classify it; examine the table of contents for an overview of the work’s structure; consult the index to identify the range of topics covered and the most important concepts (by number of references); read the jacket copy; glance at chapters which appear central to its argument, concentrating on summary statements at their beginnings or ends; and dip in here and there, reading the odd paragraph or two, not failing to read the final few pages (pp. 32–36). This should take at most an hour (p. 35). If the book holds no value for us, we can set it aside.
If we continue with the book, our next step is “superficial” reading. This is a rule for tackling a difficult work for the first time: “read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away” (p. 36). Having decided that the book is worth reading, this allows us to quickly establish whether it contains information of importance to us; only if it does do we reread it analytically.
Taken together, systematic skimming and superficial reading constitute the “inspectional” level of reading. They help us answer the question: “what is the book about?”, and lead the way to the next level of reading: “analytical”. This is a deep reading without time constraints. We haven’t grasped a complicated book until we’ve uncovered the “skeleton hidden between its covers”, until we understand both its parts and how they connect to make a unity (pp. 75, 77). It is how we answer the question, “what is the book about as a whole?” (p. 94). This requires us to express the theme or main point in a sentence or two, then list its major parts and show how these are related and organized into a single work (pp. 75–76).
Knowing the author’s main point, we can now enquire as to what questions they sought to answer (p. 92). This requires us coming to terms with the author through attentiveness to their technical vocabulary and the common words that they employ in a specialised sense—identifying the words that give us trouble (p. 102). Then, we can discover their meaning from context or reference books (p. 113).
At the heart of a book are the author’s “major affirmations and denials” (p. 121). Having come to terms, we identify the critical sentences, select the propositions they contain, then reassemble the author’s arguments (pp. 120, 136). Sometimes this will involve extracting the key claims, and other times we need to construct them by combining multiple sentences. In either case, we want to find the author’s key propositions: what they’re claiming. Having identified these propositions, we must state them in our own words and invent concrete examples to illustrate them (p. 171). Otherwise we’re vulnerable to the “vice of ‘verbalism’”—the “bad habit of using words without regard for the thoughts they should convey and without awareness of the experiences to which they should refer” (p. 128). When we can only parrot an author we’re unable to analyse their arguments and relate them to others (p. 126).
At this stage we ask of the book: “is it true?”, and if so, “what of it?” (p. 165). We determine which of the author’s questions they successfully answered; and of those that they didn’t, were they aware of this failure (p. 136)? Having understood a book, and only then, are we obliged to criticise it by agreeing, disagreeing, or suspending judgement (p. 138).
The principle ways to disagree with a book are to show where the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical. In disagreement we should be neither disputatious nor contentious, “view disagreement about matters of knowledge as being generally remediable”, and give specific reasons for our disagreements (pp. 151, 156). Or, we may agree yet show that the book is incomplete, and so suspend judgement on the book as a whole (p. 164).
If we judge that the book is true in some sense, then we must determine what significance it has (p. 165). Reading for enlightenment, Adler suggests, is a never-ending process which is always renewed by asking: “what of it?” (pp. 165–6). We’re not finished with a book when we reach the end: if it is to benefit us, we must evaluate its arguments and repeatedly enquire as to their consequences.
If part of a book seems unintelligible, despite making our best attempt to follow these rules, and only then, it may be useful to go outside of the book by consulting other sources such as reference books (p. 169). Commentaries and abstracts should be used sparingly because we may be unduly influenced by the commentator, and if we become dependent on secondary literature, we are unprepared for reading books without commentaries (pp. 174–175). The great authors “carried on a conversation with other authors”, so when we’re stuck on canonical books it can help to read related books “in relation to one another and in an order that renders the later ones more intelligible” (p. 173).
Having mastered inspectional and analytical reading, we have learned to read different books at different speeds. We can now combine these skills to reach the fourth, “syntopical”, level of reading: using multiple books on the same subject to address a particular problem in which we’re interested (p. 317). This involves compiling a tentative bibliography of relevant titles, which we reduce to a manageable size by reading its entries inspectionaly (p. 314).
We consult the titles that remain by using inspectional reading to locate the passages relevant to our problem. Then we employ analytical techniques by establishing a neutral terminology to which we bring the author—forcing them to use our language rather than “coming to terms” as we did earlier (p. 318). We’re still trying to avoid the vice of verbalism, but now in the sense that if we privilege the terminology of a single author we may fail to understand others who use different terms (ibid.). Our purpose here is finding how the books we’re considering address the problem we’re interested in exploring, then restating their arguments in a way that permits comparison between authors.
Where we previously derived the author’s questions, now we need to ask our own which illuminate our problem and are potentially answered by our authors—even if the authors wouldn’t have recognised our questions (p. 319). The truth, if it is to be found at all, is in “the conflict of opposing answers”, not in final answers (pp. 322, 324). So, we define and arrange the controversies, show how and why different authors answer the questions differently, and support this with quotations (pp. 321–323). We must “look at all sides and… take no sides”, achieving “dialectical objectivity” (p. 324). This is difficult, so demands of us a conscious effort to balance their accounts, avoiding overemphasis, underemphasis, or resorting to prejudice (p. 325). Achieving this balance means that we have understood something that mattered to us and can potentially make an original contribution to a field.
As we proceed through these levels of reading, we are obliged to answer four questions: “what is the book about?”, “what is being said in detail, and how?”, “is the book true, in whole or part?”, and “what of it?” (pp. 46–47). The “art of reading” is the honed ability to precisely answer these questions: the active reader develops a habit of questioning themselves and the author (p. 48). In this spirit, annotating the book with notes of our agreement or differences with the author, and marking key passages, is indispensable, because it keeps us alert, encourages expressing our thoughts, and aids our memory of the ideas we encountered (p. 49).
We read well, then, when we adjust our reading strategy to both our purpose and the book: when we use the time we save from avoiding inappropriate titles to objectively analyse and compare their important counterparts. To improve in reading skill requires engaging with demanding books which are initially over our heads (p. 339). But in reading a good book you “learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life” (p. 341). You become wise in that “you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life” (ibid.). Adler recommends that you should particularly seek out “the few books…to which you will want to return to over and over” because each time you do, they “can lift you again”: “help you to grow” (p. 344).
He originally wrote his main work on this subject, How to Read a Book, by himself, but the later edition was co-written by Charles van Doren. For convenience we’ll talk in terms of Adler.↩︎