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A lot of people have trouble reading, understanding & retaining dense works of theory & philosophy! If you do, here's a thread for you!
(based on the book 'How to Read a Book' by Mortimer Adler)
(based on the book 'How to Read a Book' by Mortimer Adler)
Firstly, we need to do a preface, some philosophy of reading type stuff. There's 3 core reasons for reading: entertainment (reading a chill fiction book), information (a newspaper article), understanding (most philosophy, science, etc.).
What we're tackling here is reading for understanding. Most works of philosophy would fall into this. The way to engage with these books is to think of them as a conversation with the author, you are not here to passively engage but to actively converse!
You need to actively read, treat what you're reading critically, make notes in the margins, underline stuff, question, challenge, link things together. Another part to this is approaching the book with a purpose in mind of what you want to get out of it.
Why do we have so much trouble with reading these dense works?
We're trying to do it all at once. We read it through just once, assembling the high-level points & the low-level points simultaneously. We're trying to sketch the shape of the face and shade it at the same time.
We're trying to do it all at once. We read it through just once, assembling the high-level points & the low-level points simultaneously. We're trying to sketch the shape of the face and shade it at the same time.
This is why I like Adler's model, cause it separates out these two stages. So let's go through it.
You need to approach it with some essential questions:
1. What is this book about as a whole?
2. What is it saying in detail?
3. Do I agree or disagree?
To answer these, we'll go through Adler's stages of reading
1. What is this book about as a whole?
2. What is it saying in detail?
3. Do I agree or disagree?
To answer these, we'll go through Adler's stages of reading
Stage 1: Elementary Reading
This is very simple, just being able to read, understand the meanings of words, etc. We can skip over this to get to the important bits.
This is very simple, just being able to read, understand the meanings of words, etc. We can skip over this to get to the important bits.
Stage 2: Inspectional Reading
This is basically a stage of trying to get as much from a book as possible without slogging through it thoroughly. Think of it as building the skeleton of the book before you put the flesh on the bone. There are 2 parts to this:
This is basically a stage of trying to get as much from a book as possible without slogging through it thoroughly. Think of it as building the skeleton of the book before you put the flesh on the bone. There are 2 parts to this:
Systematic Skimming
You want to skim the book. Read the title, the blurb, table of contents. Read the introduction, then flick through the pages, reading titles, sub-titles, any part that looks super important, and then read the conclusion.
You want to skim the book. Read the title, the blurb, table of contents. Read the introduction, then flick through the pages, reading titles, sub-titles, any part that looks super important, and then read the conclusion.
What you're trying to do here is get the general sense of the book; what type of book is it? What is the main thrust of the author's argument? How is it structured?
You want this high-level idea of it.
You want this high-level idea of it.
The next part to an Inspectional Reading is a "Superficial Reading". I usually skip this, but I'm gonna lay it out for you anyways.
Again, very simple. You read through the whole book, without stopping to think about or trying to unravel parts you don't understand, an any% run.
Again, very simple. You read through the whole book, without stopping to think about or trying to unravel parts you don't understand, an any% run.
That part is just to fill out the last of the bone structure of the book. If you want to go further and put some flesh onto the bone, you head to the next stage.
Stage 3: Analytical Reading
This is the stage where you put the meat on the bones. A full thorough reading of the book, where you try to answer all of those questions we started with, going at whatever pace suits you.
This is the stage where you put the meat on the bones. A full thorough reading of the book, where you try to answer all of those questions we started with, going at whatever pace suits you.
As you do this, you want to keep those questions in your mind. You want to try and figure out the structure & the detail of the arguments being made, what the author means by particular terms & phrases that they use.
When you've done all that, you wanna answer "Do I agree or disagree?" If you disagree, you should be able to come up with a specific reason why you disagree! And of course, you can always reserve judgement, neither agree nor disagree.
Adler does list a 4th stage, Synoptic Reading, which is about applying this process to a large amount of books on similar topics to synthesize between them and compare them, but I don't feel it's necessary to go into that here.
