36 pages • 1 hour read
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
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Themes
Comprehension and Active Reading
Active reading is the overarching theme of How to Read a Book. Although Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren never define “active reading,” they continually explain what it entails. A rudimentary definition of the term is putting effort into reading in order to gain full understanding of a book. In Chapter 1, the authors assert that, because all reading is an activity to some degree, “completely passive reading is impossible” (5). Rather, they suggest that “reading can be more or less active” and that “the more active the reading, the better” (5). In other words, a reader who exerts more effort will become a better reader than one who exerts less effort.
In Chapter 1, Adler and Van Doren use a sports analogy to better explain active reading. Some incorrectly assume that receiving communication, either through reading or listening, is passive. However, the authors argue that “the reader or listener is much more like the catcher in a game of baseball” (5)—making the baseball itself like the writer’s message. The catcher’s job is to catch the pitch like the reader’s job is to receive the writer’s message. According to the authors, there are four levels of reading: elementary reading, inspectional reading, analytical reading, and syntopical reading. Elementary reading is the most basic, typically taught to children during their elementary school years. With each subsequent level, active reading plays a critical role, as readers need to exert more effort and take the steps necessary to increase their reading skill.
As Adler and Van Doren explain the subsequent levels of reading, they inform readers of the steps necessary to become better readers and gain understanding. In Chapter 5, the authors suggest that four questions be asked by a reader: What is the book about as a whole? What is being said in detail and how? Is the book true, in whole or part? What of it? (46-47).
The third level of reading, analytical reading, is far more advanced and active than the previous two. For example, in the first stage of analytical reading, the reader is advised to itemize books via outlines for both important parts and the whole (83). Outside of using one’s mind to read and follow steps, creating an outline is the most active activity in the first three levels of reading. However, the fourth level of reading—syntopical reading—is the most active as a whole. In reading syntopically, the reader is required to read two or more books on the same subject. The first step in doing so is to create a bibliography of books and read them superficially for later comparison.
Increased Understanding from Early Genre Identification
A secondary theme of How to Read a Book is reading genres. Typically, the term used in this case would be “book genres” or perhaps “genres of literature,” but “reading genres” is more appropriate. Adler and Van Doren only discuss reading genres as they relate to their book’s goal to help readers gain increased understanding of books.
In Chapter 6, Adler and Van Doren state that the first rule of analytical reading is to know what kind of book one is reading as early as possible (60). Distinguishing a work of fiction from nonfiction is typically not too difficult, but recognizing the various types of fiction and nonfiction is important. As opposed to narrative nonfiction, which tells a story or details an event, Adler and Van Doren focus on expository nonfiction. Expository books are those that consist “primarily of opinions, theories, hypotheses, or speculation, for which the claim is made more or less explicitly that they are true in some sense” (60). These books can be divided into practical books and theoretical books: Practical books teach you “how to do something you want to do or think you should do,” while theoretical books “teach you that something is the case” (66). Practical books are typically guidebooks or manuals, while theoretical books are typically in fields such as history, science and mathematics, and philosophy.
In Chapter 14, Adler and Van Doren acknowledge that by limiting their discussion to nonfiction, they are omitting the most popular form of reading—imaginative literature. Imaginative literature “primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased” (199); such works includes novels, plays, and poems. As opposed to expository nonfiction, which conveys knowledge, imaginative literature attempts to “communicate an experience” through reading (199-200). The authors explain that “fiction appeals primarily to the imagination,” whereas most “serious nonfiction books” appeal to the intellect (200).
Instructions for a Better Reading Experience
A secondary theme of How to Read a Book is reading instruction. Adler and Van Doren explore this theme by providing instructions and rules to help readers become better readers. The first of these lessons are the authors’ four levels of reading: The first level of reading—elementary reading—is more theoretical, but the subsequent levels are presented as sets of instructions or rules. For example, the second level of reading—inspectional reading—instructs readers how to skim a book in order to get an idea of its form and structure and how to read one superficially in order to gain better understanding.
In Part 3, the third level of reading—analytical reading—is framed as having three stages, each stage consisting of rules. In the first stage, the reader is instructed to learn what the book is about; in the second stage, the reader is instructed how to interpret the book’s content; and in the third stage, the reader is instructed how to criticize a book as a communication of knowledge—and more specifically, how not to criticize it. The fourth level of reading—syntopical reading—suggests its own steps. The first of these steps is to “produce a list of works to be examined for relevant passages—to amass a bibliography” (317). The subsequent steps instruct the reader to read these relevant passages, bring the author to terms, establish clear questions, define the issues, and analyze the discussion.
The theme of reading instruction is especially clear when Adler and Van Doren discuss reading education, or the teaching of reading in school. In Chapter 3, the authors discuss the history of reading instruction leading up to public officials declaring that “the 1970s will be the decade of reading” (21). The many changes in how children have been taught over the last century have been publicly critiqued. Chapter 3 also discusses reading education in higher education. According to the authors, “a good liberal arts high school, if it does nothing else, ought to produce graduates who are competent analytical readers. A good college, if it does nothing else, ought to produce competent syntopical readers” (28-29). However, this is rarely the case as reading instruction in American schools typically ends in elementary school.
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