How to read "How to Read a Book"

"What book are you reading?" is one of the most common questions you'll be asked. "How are you reading it?" is one of the least common questions you'll be asked, but Mortimer Adler was very interested in it.

How to Read a Book is his take on the question—specifically, on the best way to read non-fiction books to expand your knowledge. It's rare for a how-to book to be useful today when its cover proudly boasts about being "freshly updated for the 1970s" (the original was published in 1940), but books are an old technology, so I wondered if the lessons still hold.

Adler was writing at a time when a lot more people had recently learned to read, but he claims they didn't necessarily know how to read well—in fact, an emphasis on reading as much as possible interfered with actually learning from what you read.

He proposes four levels of reading:

Level 1: Elementary reading (literacy)

This is just being able to understand what words on a page mean. If you're reading this book, you already know this one, so he doesn't say much more.

Level 2: Inspectional reading (skimming)

This has two purposes. First, to decide if the book is worth reading at all, scan the places where you can find the most information right away. Adler suggests the cover, preface, table of contents, index, and introduction, although I wonder if this advice is still useful. For one thing, most modern tables of contents are teasers rather than a full accounting of what's in the book; the first chapter instead summarizes everything to come. For another, I always get bored when reading a preface, and after having to make completely useless indices for a few business books I never want to see an index page again.

Second, if you've decided the book is worth reading, you should start by skimming the rest of it—this will give you a better foundation for when you eventually go deeper.

Level 3: Analytical reading (close reading)

This is where you start engaging with details—identifying the key terms and what they mean, identifying the key arguments and solutions, and making your own judgements about whether the evidence provided is compelling and the arguments are sound. This requires not only close reading but also writing (in one form or another)—if you can't articulate the book's gestalt and main arguments in one or a couple sentences, you haven't actually understood them. Adler also strongly argues that you need to know what kind of book you're reading, because different genres and motivations require different reading styles to make the most of them, although I wonder how true that really is.

Level 4: Syntopical reading (contextual)

This is where you bring in external knowledge on the topic—find books that might be related, skim them to identify which ones have the most to say about the angles you’re interested in, and dive into the key parts of those to find sources of agreement or contention. This requires even more active work on your part, because different authors use different terms and focus on different angles, which you have to reconcile to understand the topic for yourself. Whereas I can imagine levels 1-3 containing pretty evergreen advice because they happen within the walls of one book, I wonder if this level is more affected by societal and technological changes.

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That's what I got from the "level 2" read of Adler's book. One other key point about level-2 reading is that you should only focus on what's easy to understand: don't do any additional research or think too hard about anything yet, because that will break your flow; that's what the third and fourth levels are for. Hence all the "I wonder" comments above—to say something about those, we'll have to go deeper.

Level 3 reading

To read a book in detail, Adler says, the first step is to identify what type of book you’re reading. This includes not only the genre, but also whether it’s theoretical or practical. The genre helps you know what to look for when you’re reading closely: scientific books will have a lot of domain-specific terminology; philosophy books will have everyday words used in very specific ways; social science books are usually more narrative-like and less clear in their arguments. And whereas you can read and judge theoretical books purely on the logic of the argument, you have to take a broader perspective on practical books: is the goal they’re trying to help you achieve worthwhile, and are the rules something that you’ll actually apply in practice?

Often the type of book is obvious from the title, but not always (think Aristotle’s Metaphysics). This is why Adler suggested looking at the preface, index, and table of contents when starting on a book—if the title doesn’t give everything away, those sections have clues as to what type of book you’re getting into. (Although he admits that even at the time of his writing, tables of contents were becoming less relevant, a trajectory that seems to have continued through today.) But I don’t find any of those necessary today—as marketing has become more important and professionalized, books have gotten better at telling you exactly what they are on the cover, such as through increasingly comprehensive subtitles. And more to the point, I’m almost never picking up a book without any context; it was referenced in something else I read, or I heard about it from a friend, so I already know what I’m getting into.

Adler’s book, of course, is very practical—“how-to” is even in the title.

Next, summarize the book in a single sentence. This makes sure you’ve understood its gestalt, the aim that all the details will serve; if you’ve done a level-2 read already, you should be able to do this easily.

Adler’s work is a detailed guide to maximizing what you learn from a non-fiction book.¹

Then attack the book from the ground up: identify the author’s key terms, problems, and arguments or solutions. Highlighting a few of each from Adler’s book:

Key terms:

• Terms is itself a key term for Adler, to get meta. These aren’t just the words the author uses, but the concept they’re trying to get across—which, because language is lossy, may take some decoding on the reader’s part. This is usually easier for scientific works that have unique, technical vocabulary; harder for philosophical works that often adopt common words as their own with a strict meaning; and hardest for old books that use words whose common meanings have since changed.

• Reading is Adler’s most important term. In particular, he focuses on reading for the purpose of learning about a topic—not reading for enjoyment or any other purpose.

• Criticism also comes up frequently, used not in the pejorative sense but in the literary sense (like “judgement”). This is a key term in Adler’s book because he claims that criticism is essential to the process of reading—if you don’t have any perspective on whether the book has succeeded or failed at making its arguments, you haven’t actually learned anything from it.

Key problem:

• We spend lots of time learning how to read when we’re younger, but this focuses entirely on literacy (Adler’s “level 1”); many of us never learn how to learn from books. Adler’s work is thus structured as a how-to with deliberate steps to best learn through the process of reading a book.

Key arguments:

• You need to read at different speeds. Close reading (level 3) is important for understanding ideas in detail, but it can’t be your only mode—fast reading (level 2) not only helps make the close reading process more effective, but it also allows you to discard books that aren’t actually worth reading. Too many readers make the mistake of jumping to details too soon, focusing on books that aren’t actually the best ones for the topic they’re interested in.

• Good reading involves writing. Throughout the book, Adler suggests writing (outlines, notes, summaries) to make the most out of reading. This prevents what he calls “non-active reading”—where you don’t bother to think through anything you don’t already understand, and therefore don’t learn anything. Going further, Adler argues that reading and writing are “reciprocal”—an author starts with an outline of an argument and adds life to it; a reader must strip away that life to fully understand what the underlying argument is.

• What sort of writing do you need to do? Adler proposes four main questions to ask about a book: 1) What is the overall theme? 2) What are the detailed arguments? 3) Are they correct? 4) So what?

• Disagreement isn’t just a matter of opinion. In addition to the usual platitudes—don’t judge a book until you fully understand it, put aside your biases, treat others sympathetically—Adler lays out a strict test for disagreement: Is the author missing or mistaken about any facts? Are they making an illogical inference? Are they missing a part of the analysis that you think is essential? If not, you can’t disagree (and even on the last one, you can’t disagree with the author’s argument, only its implications). This might be provocative today, when a lot of discourse is about value disagreements rather than logical ones. You could reconcile this by at least saying, if you’re going to disagree with someone on the level of values, don’t bother reading their book because you won’t learn anything.

• Outside references are helpful, but don’t rely on them too much. This takes a few forms: if you look up every word you don’t understand in a dictionary (especially on first read), you won’t get the overall picture; if you anchor too directly on your own experiences, you’ll miss the author’s actual arguments; and if you read a commentary before reading the book itself, you’ll see only what the commentator focused on and miss everything else about the book. (I agree the last part is a problem, but I also think avoiding commentary before reading a book is too hard—in a world of billions of books, how are you supposed to know what to read?)

• Understanding a topic requires putting it in your own words. As you read other books and materials to get the full picture of a topic, you’ll need to “bring them to terms”—they won’t use common language or have the same arguments; you need to synthesize across them to build up a new understanding.

Level 4 reading

This is where we contextualize the book with other reading—in particular, I’m interested in what more modern sources say. Reviewing other notes I’ve filed away on the topic of how to read a book, a lot of Adler’s main points hold up surprisingly well:

Read books at different speeds. In an essay on “How to Read Books”, Rolf Dobelli advocates for the skim test:

I have become extremely selective. A book gets no more than ten minutes of my time before a verdict is reached – to read or not to read.

And for a second, closer reading

And those that are [worth reading] I read and immediately reread. On principle. […] Time and again I am surprised at how much one absorbs when one reads slowly and with concentration, how much one discovers that is new the second time round and how much one’s understanding deepens as a result of such careful reading.

Along similar lines, I haven’t yet committed myself to skimming books on Amazon before deciding to read them for real, but I’m sure I’d be better off if I did.

Read and evaluate “practical” books differently. Before making fun of the next best-selling self-help book that has the same banal takeaways as the ten books before it, check out this essay on how to read self-help. Practical information should be something you’ve heard before; “one weird trick to solve all your problems” is almost certainly bullshit. And it should be hard to put into practice, because otherwise you wouldn’t need it. You should read them not expecting any one book to change your life, but to help give you more tools and motivation in context of the others.

Writing and thinking are intertwined. “Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other,” William Zinsser says in On Writing Well. If you’re reading for the sake of learning, and learning is essentially thinking, then good reading must also involve writing.

Put ideas from books into your own words. How to Take Smart Notes is my north star for how to think about reading, learning, and writing. Instead of rote “note-taking” that just copies key words from one place to another, Sönke Ahrens stresses the importance of putting everything in your own words (only taking direct quotes when you’re really sure you’re going to reuse them somewhere as quotes). Not only does this force you to focus on the essence of the author’s argument (as in Adler’s Level 3 reading), it helps you develop your own ideas as you read across sources (Level 4), especially for people in creative fields.

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What’s most different today, I think, is how technology can aid the reading process. (Yes, this is yet another “…with ChatGPT!” post.)

The point of Level 2 reading was to get familiar with the main thrust of the book and decide if it’s worth going deeper into. By skimming the book, you can do this pretty quickly—but a large language model can do it even faster:

KW: please outline the key arguments in mortimer adler's book "How to Read a Book" so that I have an understanding of what the key concepts will be when I go read it more closely myself

ChatGPT: Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book" aims to teach the art of intelligent reading. The book breaks down reading into several levels and proposes techniques for effective comprehension and engagement with a text. Here's a structured outline:

Levels of Reading

1. Elementary Reading: Basic level, focuses on what the words are.

2. Inspectional Reading: Skimming, scanning, and superficial reading to get an overall idea.

3. Analytical Reading: Deep understanding of the text, breaking it down to its core ideas.

4. Syntopical Reading: Comparative reading across multiple works to synthesize knowledge.

Rules for Effective Reading

Inspectional Reading

1. Skim the book: Look at the title, preface, table of contents, index, and a few paragraphs and chapters.

2. Superficial Reading: Read through without stopping to look up anything you don't understand.

Analytical Reading

1. Classify the book: Understand the type and subject matter.

2. X-ray the book: Identify structure, main parts, and how they contribute to the whole.

3. Come to terms with the author: Understand the key terms and phrases.

4. Determine the key propositions and arguments: What points is the author trying to make?

5. Find the problems: What questions is the author trying to answer?

6. Critically assess the book: Don't just absorb information; make a judgement about the quality and significance of the work.

Syntopical Reading

1. Create a Bibliography: List relevant works.

2. Inspect the books: Skim to find the relevant passages.

3. Bring the authors to terms: Understand the terminology across works.

4. Get the questions clear: Frame the questions that will lead to your analysis.

5. Analyze the discussion: Compare and contrast arguments, identify areas of agreement and disagreement.

6. Syntopize: Bring together the analyzed information to answer your initial questions.

Miscellaneous Tips

• How to Take Notes: Adler suggests marginalia, outlines, and analytical notes.

• Reading Speed: Different types of reading require different speeds.

• Reading Groups: Encourages discussions for better understanding.

And one of the main challenges in Level 4 reading is knowing what other materials are most useful in a sea of content. Large language models trained on vast amounts of data are probably already familiar with most of these other sources, so they can do a good job of pointing you to useful ones (the list is curated from a few follow-up prompts):

KW: what are some other books or other materials I should read to get other authors' perspectives on the main topics Adler covers in his book? these other materials should generally be about how to read a non-fiction book for learning, not other genres (e.g. fiction) or for other purposes (e.g. entertainment).

ChatGPT: Certainly, while Adler's book is a seminal work on the topic, it's beneficial to broaden your perspectives by diving into other works that deal with reading non-fiction effectively. Here's a selection:

Books on Reading & Critical Thinking

1. "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr

   • Focus: Examines how digital media affects our brain and alters our reading habits.

   • Why: Provides context for the modern challenges to focused, deep reading.

2. "How to Read and Why" by Harold Bloom

   • Focus: Discusses the intellectual and emotional benefits of reading.

   • Why: While not limited to non-fiction, Bloom does touch on various genres and the skills can be transferred.

3. "Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them" by Francine Prose

   • Focus: Close reading from a writer's perspective.

   • Why: While aimed at aspiring writers, the book offers techniques for dissecting text deeply, which can be valuable for analytical reading of non-fiction.

4. "Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates" by Mike Wallace and Alison Wray

   • Focus: Aimed at academic readers, but offers principles of critical reading and argument assessment.

   • Why: Geared towards those who want to go beyond surface-level understanding to critique and evaluate texts.

5. "The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age" by Sven Birkerts

   • Focus: Explores how the digital age influences our reading habits.

   • Why: Relevant for understanding the shifts in reading deeply and critically in the modern world.

Papers and Academic Articles

1. "The Art of Close Reading (Part One, Two, Three)" by The Foundation for Critical Thinking

   • Focus: Articles discussing the skills required for close reading.

   • Why: Provides an academic perspective on the kind of analytical reading Adler discusses.

2. "What Reading Does for the Mind" by Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich

   • Focus: Examines the cognitive benefits of reading.

   • Why: A deep dive into the psychology of reading can enhance your understanding of why critical and analytical reading are vital.

3. "Critical Reading Towards Critical Writing"

   • Focus: An academic paper available through various university websites that focuses on transitioning from critical reading to critical writing.

   • Why: Highlights the intimate connection between reading deeply and thinking critically, reinforcing the skills needed for analytical reading.

What’s truly evergreen is Level 3 reading—digesting an author’s argument in detail and putting it in your own words—and the parallel component of Level 4, because that’s where the real learning happens.

1. Adler also has a chapter on reading fiction—arguing that you should optimize for immersion, such as by reading in as few sittings as possible and not worrying at first about keeping track of all the characters and events (the important ones will make themselves clear throughout the plot)—but it’s not really what he’s focused on.