How to read a Book

Here I'll write my own opinion, a brief summary and some excerpts from the book called "How to read a Book - A Guide to Reading the Great Books", By Mortimer J. Adler (1965)

Important questions:

Why did the author write this book? What does he want me to do, believe or experience?

The writer wants to guide the readers to how to read and understand a book. It’s just, as he mentions, like listening to a symphony or watching a piece of art. One cannot really understand and feel it, unless he knows how to.
However, I’m afraid that the writer was very verbose, lamenting a lot about the failures of the educational system more than the objective of providing a how-to-book. He also gave long examples which were completely unnecessary. I’m afraid I sometimes yelled at the author for the completely unnecessary long parts of his book.
A mind map summary, which represents the necessary skeleton of such a book, in my opinion, is attached at the end of this report. He unfortunately covered it with “a mass of fat” as he himself criticized such books.
He then goes on giving some advice on reading different types of books, like novels or history books. For these, the same rules apply, but there are some additional points to note.

Did he succeed in his intentions? Am I convinced?

To some extent. The unnecessary length of the book concealed the original message (at least the one that I was all the time digging throughout the book and trying to get.) I guess he could have written a better book if he was direct and to the point.
I have, nevertheless, to point out to the fact that I did find some very good quotations in the book which are quite useful.

What is the take home message?

The take home message is summarized in a mind map.









Quotations

“In the first place, there is initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be superior to the reader, and his book must convey in readable form the insights he possesses and his potential readers lack. In the second place, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree, seldom perhaps fully, but always approaching equality with the writer. To the extent that equality is approached, the communication is perfectly consummated …. In short, we can only learn from our betters.”

“Listening is learning from a living teacher, while reading is learning from a dead one.”

“The most successful how-to-book cannot take you by the hand or say at the right moment, "Stop doing it that way. Do it this way."

“The secondary teacher is simply a better student …. He should not act as if he were the primary teacher ….. He should not masquerade as one who knows and can teach by virtue of his original disvoceries, if he is only one who has learned through being taught”

“Any art or skill is possessed by those who have formed the habit of operaitng according to its rules. In fact, the artist or craftsman in any field differs thus from those who lack his skill. He has a habit they lack .... There is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating ….. Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit.”

“In learning to drive an automobile, you must know the rules but you do not have to know the principles of automotive mechanics which make them right. In other words, to understand the rules is to know more than the rules” ..... God has given us some rules, but he didn't say what are the principles behind those rules. Is it for us to find out? Are those principles time dependent or not, so that the rules can change or not.

“The reader tries to uncover the skeleton the book conceals. The author starts with it and tries to cover it up …. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat. The joints should not show through where the flesh is thin, but if flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectible and the motion of the parts will revea) the ai ticulation

“There is a significant difference between books conveying knowledge and poetical works, plays, and novels ….. If the novel is any good at all, the idea is in the whole, and cannot be found short of reading the whole. But you can get the idea of Aristotle's Ethics or Darwin's The Origin of Species by reading some parts of it carefully.”

“Because language is imperfect as a medium, it also functions as an obstacle to communication. “

“The problem of reading the Holy Book—if you have faith that it is the Word of God—is the most difficult problem in the whole field of reading.”

“I like to think of the great books as involved in a prolonged conversation about the basic problems of mankind. “