How To Read A Book - Analytical Reading

 

The third task in reading.  After you have skimmed the book, read the entire book from front to finish.  Then answer the following four questions.

1. What is the book about as a whole?
2. What is being said in detail, and how?
3. Is this book true, in whole or in part?
4. What is the significance of the work?

How To Make A Book Your Own

After you have read the book once and attempted to answer the above questions, you can start to study the book in detail.

1. Use the following suggestions to help you in your work:
2. Underline major points.
3. Add vertical lines to the margin to point to a passage too long to be underlined.
4. Put stars or asterisks in the margin for the 10-12 most important passages in the book.  Fold the top page corner on those pages.
5. Put numbers in the margins to indicate a sequence of  points.
6. Put page numbers in the margins to indicate that the same point is covered elsewhere in the book.
7. Circle key words or phrases.
8. Write in the margins, or at the top and bottom of the page to indicate your questions and ideas.

 

Note Making

Once you have done this you should start making your own notes about the material.

In general there are three types of notes you should be making:

1. Stuctural note taking. What is the book about and how is it structured.
2. Conceptual note taking.  Analyzing the author's concepts.
3. Shape of discussion notes. (Dialectical) Comparing the same discussion through books by different authors.

 

Analyzing the Book

Once you have created your notes you can start analyzing the book.  Use the following rules to help you:

1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
2. State the the whole book is about in a short paragraph.
3. Enumerate major parts of the book in their order and relation.
4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.
5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting their keywords.
6. Grasp the author's leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences.
7. Know the author's arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them from, sequences of sentences.
8. Determine which of the author's problems they have solved and which they have not.
9. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book.
10. Do not disagree disputatiously  with the author.
11. Demonstrate  that you recognize the difference between knowledge and opinion by presenting good reason for the judgments you have made.
12. Criteria for disagreement: Show the author for uninformed, show the author was misinformed, show the author was illogical, show how the author's analysis or account was incomplete.

To rules can be summarized as:

• Rules 1-4 - What a book is about.
• Rules 4-8 - Interpreting a book.
• Rules 9-12 - Is it true? What of it?

I was recommended this book by Mortimer Adler before I started university.  It was one of the most useful books I have ever read.  If you want to learn how to read at an advanced, academic level I would heartily endorse this book.  Buy it today to learn how to improve your reading and analytical skills.

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