How to Read a Book (A Touchstone book)

However ridiculous it seems to you now, this book will prepare you to clearly and effectively understand all the books, articles and blogs that you will read after this book.

Stan Faryna

I have the good fortune to be the 100th person to review this book, yet I think it deserves as much attention as possible, especially now that our educational system has dwindled down to new historic lows. As a society in the United States, we have clearly selected a path to quantity in terms of literacy, rather than quality and although this has given us great employability, much of the great talent in this country is latent. The approach undertaken by Adler is to awaken a reader from a passive observer to an active and demanding participant in the educational process while also appealing to the intellect. There is sometheing here for everyone seeking better ways to capture information or gain understanding from the most important invention of all time, the written word.

I honestly thought I knew how to read a book until I was humbled into the realization that there are several levels to this activity, ultimately leading to the question of how to truly internalize a book and make use of it. It has in that respect increased my personal expectations of myself and thereby the selection of readings that I have undertaken. In How to Read a Book proves that an author can play the part of the teacher.

How to Read a Book is an effective blueprint on how to activately angage with an author who through his work reaches out to a reader. I feel that due to this, this book serves as an excellent aid towards personal development if this is the nature of the material one reads.

Adler was unquestionably a gifted teacher (through his writings at least) and has done great justice to the Aristotelian tradition of teaching through detached brilliance, codifying his observations.

The other great byproduct of how to read a book is the preponderance of the writer on how to actually structure the writing of a book. The writing process is thus greatly enhanced, as one should anticipate the needs of a highly discriminating reader and produce meaningful and accessible work.

I wish that this book was part of the curriculum for me in high school, it would have made a significant impact in my college years.

In spite of this book's oxymoronic title, it is a book for every one who wants to do serious reading. It could have saved me countless hours in grad school while researching my thesis. The book discusses 4 levels of reading. As bonuses, it also includes tests to help you understand how to use these techniques on passages from famous books and it has Mortimer Adler's famous bibliography that he developed while creating his famous Great Books program.

Previewing, one of the four levels of reading discussed, helps you decide whether to read the book, whether to delete it from your bibliography, what the book is about in detail, and how much time to devote to it. This technique alone could save any student doing term papers dozens of hours and help him prepare a better paper with better citations. Although serious researchers will get the most value from this book, anyone who wants to understand a serious book will also benefit. For example, I recently previewed "Learned Optimism" and before even reading it through I knew what to expect, the author's conclusions, his evidence, and his suggested techniques.

This is, without a doubt, the most useful book I have ever read. You may experience the same, even if you don't read all of it (which I did, but don't always recommend). The later chapters on syntopical reading (multiple simultaneous books on the same subject) and some of the specific types of reading (CH14-19) may be best read as needed, or some cases, re-read to sharpen your reading skills for a particularly important or challenging read.

Another reviewer has written a good high level summary, so I won't repeat her outline of the book's argument, but I will say that I recommend this book to everyone who has even a passing interest in gaining more from what they read.

To the few who claim this is a boring book, I say: it is a serious book about how to read better. If you're not even a little excited about the benefits of that, you probably won't like it. If you only read books for entertainment the way one might watch a movie, this book is likely of little use to you and best avoided. For anyone with a job and/or passion that requires detailed and critical understanding of anything written, I happily introduce you to your new favorite book.

THIS BOOK SHOULD BECOME MANDATORY READING FOR ALL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. IT GIVES YOU PRACTICAL ADVICE ON HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF WHAT YOU READ. IT TEACHES YOU HOW TO QUESTION, AND ANALYZE A BOOK IN ORDER TO GET THE MAXIMUM BENEFIT OUT OF IT. IN THIS CASE FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND AND COMPREHEND WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU'RE READING. GET IT. READ IT. IT HAS OPENED MY EYES.