How to Read a Book

How to Read a Book

Are you familiar with the classic 'How to Read a Book' (1972) by Adler & Van Doren?

The terms 'skimming' and 'scanning', as well as cloze/close reading are familiar to Westerners. Plus, Adler and Van Doren distinguish the following levels of reading:

Elementary Reading (ability to recognize and string together written words and sentences and to extract the surface meaning);

Inspectional Reading (ability to skim, get the gist of a book in a limited amount of time);

Analytical Reading (ability to extract the larger points made by a text) and finally,

Syntoptical Reading (complex, systematic, comparative reading — the ability to read a book while holding it in a larger context — or, the ability to read more than one book at a time) (pp.17-18).