Love this. I'm going to share it with my junior teachers -- never too young to start checking on what you're reading! (and some adults could use the lesson too).
Nice job, David. Perhaps sometime you'd consider tackling "the deeper read," looking for things such as style, sentence structure, devices, etc. Or not. Anyway, anything that prompts people to read is welcomed.
That is a good question. The book is a bit pedantic and written for a different, pre-digital age. The ideal target audience is either the high school senior or university freshman who wants to be an academic. It divides the types of reading into four categories: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and synoptical. One example of possibly being pedantic is that with analytical reading after you read a book, you are to write your own outline of how you think the book should have been organized and see how it compares to the actual book. Synoptical reading is the process of reading multiple books on similar topics to compare and contrast them: it's the process I imagine is followed by scholars who are researching topics in order to create papers or even entire books on topics. There's actually a lot of overlap between your post and parts of the book but analytical/synoptical reading, which they kind of seem neat on the surface, are a hell of a lot more work than many people will undertake unless they feel they have to.
TBH, instead of reading the book, there are at least 2 blog posts out there which nicely summarize the contents of How To Read a Book. I first heard about the book via Copyblogger: https://copyblogger.com/how-to-read/ and then found another interesting take: https://jimclair.com/ex-libris/
As an academic I doubt you'd find anything new in the book but non-academics who want to up their reading game with different approaches and techniques may find it interesting.
This is great, thank you! I'm going to check those out -- I hope others will, too. I keep a list of good sources for folks, because I get asked about this all the time. Adding the links.
Thanks. Well written, well thought out. I used to review theatre and there's a big difference between the way I watched a show that I was going to review and one that I wasn't.
It's me, hi
Thanks now that's stuck in my head
My work here is done.
Love this. I'm going to share it with my junior teachers -- never too young to start checking on what you're reading! (and some adults could use the lesson too).
Thanks for reading and sharing!
This is a thoughtful piece. For an in-depth look at reading and creativity, Twyla Tharp has written a couple of volumes that give helpful hints.
Thank you! Adding it to the list.
Nice job, David. Perhaps sometime you'd consider tackling "the deeper read," looking for things such as style, sentence structure, devices, etc. Or not. Anyway, anything that prompts people to read is welcomed.
That's a great idea, thank you!
What a lovely, thoughtful, generous piece of writing. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you! I appreciate that.
Sound advice. Did you intentionally use the title of Adler and Van Doren's book? Also, have you read that book? Curious to know.
I didn't intentionally -- and haven't read it. Would you recommend it?
That is a good question. The book is a bit pedantic and written for a different, pre-digital age. The ideal target audience is either the high school senior or university freshman who wants to be an academic. It divides the types of reading into four categories: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and synoptical. One example of possibly being pedantic is that with analytical reading after you read a book, you are to write your own outline of how you think the book should have been organized and see how it compares to the actual book. Synoptical reading is the process of reading multiple books on similar topics to compare and contrast them: it's the process I imagine is followed by scholars who are researching topics in order to create papers or even entire books on topics. There's actually a lot of overlap between your post and parts of the book but analytical/synoptical reading, which they kind of seem neat on the surface, are a hell of a lot more work than many people will undertake unless they feel they have to.
TBH, instead of reading the book, there are at least 2 blog posts out there which nicely summarize the contents of How To Read a Book. I first heard about the book via Copyblogger: https://copyblogger.com/how-to-read/ and then found another interesting take: https://jimclair.com/ex-libris/
As an academic I doubt you'd find anything new in the book but non-academics who want to up their reading game with different approaches and techniques may find it interesting.
This is great, thank you! I'm going to check those out -- I hope others will, too. I keep a list of good sources for folks, because I get asked about this all the time. Adding the links.
Thanks. Well written, well thought out. I used to review theatre and there's a big difference between the way I watched a show that I was going to review and one that I wasn't.