How to Read a Book: The Ultimate

Guide by Mortimer Adler

“Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements

with the author.
It is the highest respect you can pay him.”
— Edgar Allen Poe

***

I bet you already know how to read a book. You were taught in elementary
school.

But do you know how to read well?

There is a difference between reading for understanding and reading for

information.

If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t given much thought
to how you read. And how you read makes a huge difference to knowledge
accumulation.
 A lot of people confuse knowing the name of something with
understanding. While great for exercising your memory, the regurgitation of
facts without understanding and context gains you little in the real world.

A good heuristic: Anything easily digested is reading for information.

Consider the newspaper, are you truly learning anything new? Do you
consider the writer your superior when it comes to knowledge in the subject?
Odds are probably not. That means you’re reading for information. It means
you're likely to parrot an opinion that isn't yours as if you had done the work.

There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s how most people read. But you’re not
really learning anything new. It’s not going to give you an edge or make you
better at your job.

Reading alone isn't enough to improve your knowledge. Learning something

insightful requires work. You have to read something above your current
level. You need to find writers who are more knowledgeable on a particular
subject than yourself. This is how you get smarter.

Reading for understanding narrows the gap between reader and writer.

The Four Levels of Reading

Mortimer Adler literally wrote the book on reading. In his book, How to
Read a Book, he identifies four levels of reading:

1. Elementary
2. Inspectional
3. Analytical
4. Syntopical

The goal of reading determines how you read.

Reading the latest Danielle Steel novel is not the same as reading Plato. If
you’re reading for entertainment or information, you’re going to read a lot
differently (and likely different material) than reading to increase
understanding. While many people are proficient in reading for information
and entertainment, few improve their ability to read for knowledge.
 Before we can improve our reading skills, we need to understand
the differences in the reading levels.

They are thought of as levels because you can’t move to a higher level
without a firm understanding of the previous one — they are cumulative.

How to Read a Book

1. Elementary Reading
This is the level of reading taught in our elementary schools. You already
know how to do this.

2. Inspectional Reading
We’ve been taught that skimming and superficial reading are bad for
understanding. That is not necessarily the case. Using these tools effectively
can increase understanding. Inspectional reading allows us to look at the
author's blueprint and evaluate the merits of a deeper reading experience.

There are two sub-types of inspectional reading:

• Systematic skimming — This is meant to be a quick check of the book by

(1) reading the preface; (2) studying the table of contents; (3) checking the
index; and (4) reading the inside jacket. This should give you sufficient
knowledge to understand the chapters in the book pivotal to the author's
argument. Dip in here and there, but never with more than a paragraph or
two. Skimming helps you reach to a decision point: Does this book deserve
more of my time and attention? If not you put it down.
• Superficial reading — This is when you just read. Don’t ponder the
argument, don’t look things up, don’t write in the margins. If you don’t
understand something, move on. What you gain from this quick read will help
you later when you go back and put more effort into reading. You now come
to another decision point. Now that you have a better understanding of the
book's contents and its structure, do you want to understand it?

Inspectional reading gives you the gist of things.

 Sometimes that’s all we want or need. But sometimes we want more.
Sometimes we want to understand.

3. Analytical Reading

Francis Bacon once remarked, “some books are to be tasted, others to be

swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

You can think of analytical reading as doing that chewing and digesting. This
is doing the work.

Analytical reading is a thorough reading.

If inspectional reading is the best you can do quickly, this is the best reading
you can do given time.

At this point, you start to engage your mind and dig into the work required to
understand what’s being said. I highly recommend you use marginalia to
converse with the author.

There are four rules to Analytical Reading

• Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.

• State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
• Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts
as you have outlined the whole.
• Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.

You’ll probably notice that while those sound pretty easy, they involve a lot
of work. Luckily the inspectional reading you’ve already done has primed
you for this.

After an inspectional read, you will understand the book and the author's
views.

But that doesn't mean you'll understand the broader subject. To do that you
need to use comparative reading to synthesize knowledge from several books
on the same subject.
 4. Syntopical Reading
This is also known as comparative reading and it represents the most
demanding and difficult reading of all. Syntopical Reading involves reading
many books on the same subject and comparing and contrasting the ideas,
vocabulary, and arguments.

This task is undertaken by identifying relevant passages, translating the

terminology, framing and ordering the questions that need answering,
defining the issues, and having a conversation with the responses.

The goal is not to achieve an overall understanding of any particular book,

but rather to understand the subject and develop a deep fluency.

This is all about you and filling in your knowledge gaps.

There are five steps to syntopical reading:

• Finding the Relevant Passages — You need to find the right books and then
the passages that are most relevant to filling your needs. So the first step is an
inspectional reading of all the works that you have identified as relevant.
• Bringing the Author to Terms — In analytical reading, you must identify
the keywords and how they are used by the author. This is fairly
straightforward. The process becomes more complicated now as each author
has probably used different terms and concepts to frame their argument. Now
the onus is on you to establish the terms. Rather than using the author's
language, you must use your own. In short, this is an exercise in translation
and synthesis.
• Getting the Questions Clear — Rather than focus on the problems the
author is trying to solve, you need to focus on the questions that you want
answered. Just as we must establish our own terminology, so too must we
establish our own propositions by shedding light on our problems to which
the authors provide answers. It’s important to frame the questions in such a
way that all or most of the authors can be interpreted as providing answers.
Sometimes we might not get an answer to our questions because they might
not have been seen as questions by the authors.
• Defining the Issues — If you’ve asked a clear question to which there are
multiple answers then an issue has been defined. Opposing answers, now
translated into your terms, must be ordered in relation to one another.
 Understanding multiple perspectives within an issue helps you form an
intelligent opinion.
• Analyzing the Discussion — It’s presumptuous to expect we’ll find a single
unchallenged truth to any of our questions. Our answer is the conflict of
opposing answers. The value is the discussion you have with these authors.
You can now have an informed opinion.

Become a Demanding Reader

Reading is all about asking the right questions in the right order and seeking
answers.

There are four main questions you need to ask of every book:

• What is this book about?

• What is being said in detail and how?
• Is this book true in whole or in part?
• What of it?

If all of this sounds like hard work, you’re right. Most people won’t do it.
That’s what sets you apart.

If you want to dig deeper, check out our online course on how to read more
effectively.