How To Read
If you cannot read a lot of books, listen to those who do.
Mortimer Adler wrote a book about title How to Read a Book, I intend to read it, but I
haven't yet. But I have read a few blog posts by people who have read that book, and
written about it. Such as AoM and FS.
These are the lessons I have gleamed from them, plus other resources (such as
[Link] telling us how he takes book notes)
Inspectional Reading
1. Systematic skimming (You know what that means *shrug*)
2. Superficial Reading. Just going through the book once. This will also make it
clear whether you need to read it again. Mark passages that need to learned,
investigated further. Don't stop and scrutinize.
3. Take actionable One-page bullet-summary of every chapter as you finish it.
Analytical Reading
4. Answer The Four Questions for every book you read. These should be in your
mind even before step 1. But you should be able to answer them by this time. Keep a
journal per book (or have one post per book)
The four questions are as follows:
1. i. What's the book about as a whole?
2. ii. What's being said in detail? and how?
3. iii. Is the book true, in part of in whole?
4. iv. What of it? What's the significance?
The Four rules of Analytical reading:
1. What kind of book is this?
2. What is the whole of the book?
3. What're the parts of the book and its structure?
4. What problems/questions did the author start with?
Synoptical Reading
After this, it's done. You have read the book. Now, if you want to move up from
reading the book to reading the subject. Then you need Synoptical Reading. Which
covers:
1. Finding the relevant passages
2. Bringing the author to terms
3. Getting the question clear
4. Defining the issues
5. Analyzing the discussion
James Clear writes a 3 sentence summary of a book as soon as he finishes it. In his
own words:
Some questions I consider when summarizing a book include:
* What are the main ideas?
* If I implemented one idea from this book right now, which one would it be?
* How would I describe the book to a friend?
Some other tips:
1. Read with a purpose (What do you want from that book?)
2. Pay attention to major arguments
3. Use different modes. Talking, Writing, Visualizing
4. Take time to process / Pause and meditate / Take breaks
5. Focus on the High Value content (headings etc)
6. Read more than once
7. Know the author
8. Understand the context
9. Question what you read
Hence the methodology becomes:
1. Skim the book + Read about the book (30 minutes)
2. Read once and mark passages (Superficial Reading)
1. During Superficial Reading , write actionable bulleted
one-page summaries for every chapter as you go
along.
3. After a week, Read again, focusing on the marked
pages.
1. Try to summarize and outline the book.
2. Create your own ToC.
3. Answer the four questions of analytical reading, and
write them in a journal, (this is Summary), along with
detailed notes. Write these down separately for every
book.
Step 1: Pre-Read
1. Skim the book
2. Read about the book
3. Read reviews, read about the author
4. Basically, do your recce
Step 2: Read first time
1. Read as if you're having a conversation with the author
2. Underline/ mark interesting passages, things you need to memorize, see again
or, look further.
1. Write in marginalia
2. Use sticky notes
3. Maintain an index of page numbers which has marginalia
3. Underline every difficult word, Maintain a dictionary at the end of the book of all
the difficult words
4. Write actionable, bulleted summaries of every chapter as you go alone.
Step 3: Read second time, after two weeks
Try to recall what's in the chapter, before you read it
Revisit your conversation
After reading, see if you can recall it again.
Step 4: Talk about it.
Step 5: Read third time