How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

A Book Review

Why Reading Matters

I work mostly with college Freshman and I see first hand the shift in attitudes about reading whole books. Some students come to college simply lacking the ability to read and understand a book length story. Others have these skills but they simply don’t value books. These kinds of students see books as an outdated technology like vinyl records or VHS tape. Parents, you can do a lot to counter this cultural trend and train your kids to love reading. Start your kids off at a young age with books that engage their sense of wonder and imagination; fantasy novels. science fiction. adventure, or whatever piques their interest. As your child gets older, help them discover that books of history, theology, philosophy, and yes, even the Bible, can be just as wondrous. Learning to love this later class of non-fiction books present the greatest cultural challenge. If you’re not sure where to begin, pick up a copy of this classic book and train your kids to use these reading strategies.

Get the Book

Adler, Mortimer J. and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011. Kindle. 426 pp. $12.99.

Biographical Sketch of the Authors

Mortimer J. Adler was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Adler received his doctorate in psychology from Columbia University where he later worked as a professor of the philosophy of law. Adler served as an editor for Encyclopedia Britannica and co-founder and editor for the Great Books of the Western World program. From 1943 until his conversion to Christianity in 1984. Adler considered himself a non-religious Thomist. A good deal of Adler’s study was spent trying to prove the existence of God to the non-theist mind by overcoming what he saw as the failure of Aquinas’s five proofs.

Charles Van Doren’s early career as a TV personality ended in public disgrace when he was exposed for cheating to win a game show. Forced to resign as an English instructor at Columbia University, he became an editor for Encyclopedia Britannica and co-editor with Adler on multiple projects covering US history and philosophy. Most notable in his career, Van Doren served as the co-author for the 1972 revision of Adler’s original 1940 edition of How to Read a Book: A Guide to Reading the Great Books.

Summary of the Contents

The art of reading a book requires mastery of a select set of skills across four levels: each one necessary to gain knowledge and, more importantly, grow in understanding. The four levels of reading are Elementary, Inspectional, Analytical and Syntopical. The book itself is also divided into four parts written to help the reader acquire the skills needed to understand any book. Part I covers the various dimensions of reading along with the first two reading levels: Elementary and Inspectional. The more actively engaged the reader is with the author, the more successful their quest to gain understanding. The best books to engage both the senses and imagination contain ideas above the reader’s current understanding and offer the promise of elevating the mind to enlightenment. To overcome the inequity between reader and book, the reader must master the first two levels of reading.

The first level of reading is Elementary and asks the reader, “What does the sentence say?” This is a basic level of reading familiar to most from grade school on.

The second level of reading is Inspectional, or Superficial, and asks the reader, “What is the book about?” This second level challenges the reader to use systematic skimming and pre-reading techniques within an established period of time to uncover the skeletal structure and identify parts of the book.

Part II covers the third level of reading called Analytical which is broken into three stages covering a total of fifteen rules. In stage one, the reader must discover what a book is about by classifying the books subject matter, writing a brief statement of the purpose, enumerating and outlining each major part, and defining the problem(s) the author intends to resolve. Stage two of the third level asks the reader to interpret the book’s content by understanding the author’s unique terminology, grasp the most important propositions by pinpointing key sentences, know the author’s arguments by tying together these key sentences, and determine the author’s effectiveness in answering the problems they set out to resolve. Finally, the reader is prepared to properly critique the book through observation of the rules of etiquette. The reader must refrain from criticism until the outline and interpretation have been completed. At that time, the reader can offer thoughtful disagreement which makes clear distinctions between the reader’s own personal preference and any true defect in the book’s knowledge. The criterion for the critique includes noting differences between where the author is uninformed, misinformed, illogical, or analytically incomplete.

Part II concludes by offering an important distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic reading. Adler writes, “Any aid to reading that lies outside the book being read we may speak of as extrinsic. By ‘intrinsic reading’ we mean reading a book in itself, quite apart from all other books. By ‘extrinsic reading’ we mean reading a book in the light of other books” (166).

To properly read, the individual must approach the book on its own terms, within its own context, and aided only by the reader’s common and special experience.

Only after the reader has come to understand the book should he begin an extrinsic reading through use of tools such as commentaries and dictionaries.

Part III is not covered in this summary but includes approaches to reading different genres of books. Part IV covers the fourth level of Syntopical Reading and the ultimate goals the reader should aspire to achieve. The Syntopical reader is able to synthesize the inspectional and analytical knowledge acquired from multiple books on the same subject and present it in ways not apparent in any of these primary sources. Syntopical Reading is a five-step process that begins with finding the key passages, bringing multiple authors into dialogue through neutral terminology, clarifying the questions raised by each author, using their unique answers to define the major and minor issues, and finally analyzing the discussion. This final analysis comes only after the first four steps have placed the reader on neutral ground between the various authors under examination. Then, and only then, can the reader organize the discussion from the general to the specific such that the greatest amount of knowledge may be conveyed with clarity.

Critical Evaluation

Adler and Van Doren wrote their book to help readers reach enlightenment, which in their own words, “is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it” (p. 11). The processes and skills they elucidate throughout the book provide a clear and practical framework for achieving their stated goal. One of the unique qualities of the book is its treatment of instructional pedagogy as both similar to, and distinct from. the process of self-guided discovery through reading. “Reading, like unaided discovery,” they write, “is learning from an absent teacher” (p. 16) The authors use the teacher/student relationship as a helpful analogy between the author/reader. Just like the student must learn to dialogue with the teacher, they must learn to dialogue with the author through the pages of the book (p. 74).

The analogy of the book as teacher suggests a potential shortfall of the Adler’s thesis. His emphasis on self-learning as the highest form of understanding portends a bias against those who learn primarily through audio or visual media. Adler’s bias is also evident in his suggestion that poor reading skills are a result of the American ideal of education for everyone embraced by colleges (p. 21–22). This soft elitism which elevates one kind of learning above all others is due, in large part, to Adler’s embrace of Thomistic Scholasticism which emphasizes reliance on authoritative text-based sources established by a consensus of tradition and a rationalist quaestiofor unbiased analysis and understanding.

For the Christian reader, there is one other limitation to this book. Adler and Van Doren offer excellent guidance on how to read with reason but make no mention of how both knowledge and understanding come through the work of the Holy Spirit.

This weakness is partly due to the limit on their scope, but one which the thinking Christian must weigh in light of their faith in the illuminating power of the Spirit. The capacity of the Spirit of God to give a deeper understanding of the Bible should not be seen as a rejection of reason nor an invalidation of the four stages of reading. Rather, the Christian must allow both their capacity to reason and skill in reading to be informed by God’s Spirit who transcends human limitations.

In consideration of these potential weakness, the value of this book persists through its promotion of the art of reading. The book offers an excellent guide to all those who value “keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection” (14). Aside from the obvious interest from those wanting a greater value out of their reading, this book is an invaluable tool for those seeking a successful career as a writer. As the authors assert, writing and reading are reciprocal activities necessary to anyone who hopes to write well (p. 90). One must know how to read, before they can know best how to write.