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A review by vimcenzo
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Charles Van Doren, Mortimer J. Adler
challenging
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.0
Rating this as a "book" is strange, because it's instructional. It's like rating the guide to an IKEA assembly guide. If the end result was a shelf, then the instructions were successful. And if you don't, or they involved a struggle to understand, then they probably weren't.
So do I know how to read a book? Yes, ignoring the obvious, of course, but this is a book that means to truly "absorb" a book. They use an analogy regarding baseball, whether a ball is "caught" or not. If a reader does not "catch" the book, then the work they do to bridge the gap of knowledge is the "enlightenment" that the reader will experience. Really, this book is commendable for trying to address that people do not indeed know "how" to read a book, that they are pre-fed an understanding and interpretation to pass a course or expected to be well-read by a societal peer pressure at the cost of never truly understanding a book past a surface level.
Some flaws: Although I wouldn't call this a self-help book, strictly speaking, I think that it has its hallmarks in the way it occasionally negs the reader and makes them doubt themselves. It takes on some self-deprecation, in saying that few people ever perfectly understand a book, and those that do are very few and far between. That the learning, and the effort, is in trying. However, their methodology to get to that is flawed as a result. They write a tautology at some point that suggests that reading something by an author means the reader must agree or disagree, or defer judgement if they feel they have not understood the material in full. Disagreement, of course, means that the reader must have a learned reason why that is not the case (one not driven by emotion). They then turn this tautology on their own work, saying that if the reader accepts all the words said as being true, then it is their imperative to read in the style that Adler and van Doren dictate.
No.
This book does almost nothing to talk about reading with different critical lenses, like Marxism, or semiotics, or other modes of thinking that, while not guaranteed to be the solution, is better than the blind charge that this book tries to encourage. They begrudgingly give advice on how to use reference books and specify that the history of words. They're right to at least feel suspicious that a reference book will taint a reader's perception of how to understand a word or concept. But outright dismissing Shakespeare editions that have that reference sheet baked into it puts a lot of faith in the reader that if they are not intelligent, that they will not grow frustrated with the struggle. This is simply my opinion, to be sure, but what I find contradictory is the idea that the reader must accept this style of reading as the best option while in the same book admitting that "few have truly understood a book." Really? Does that include the authors themselves, who have placed hundreds of works in their recommended reading list? And if they have failed to understand the reading, does that not mean that their own methodology is flawed? Are they not obligated to propose a better alternative to what they have done? I certainly do not have one--as flawed as their tautology is, I follow it in some degree. But I think it's a bit much to write a book literally declaring it is the way "to read a book" and then shrug and say "Well, but who has ever read a book, really?"
I picked this during my Ph.D because the classes weren't as demanding as I wanted them to be (or to involve something a little more dynamic and a little less like busywork.) I was feeling a little intellectually flabby and even the book itself was a difficult read. I'm saying this because if you are an English Major, you likely already know most of what this book proposes and more. But if you don't study English and want to crack the code a little, this is gonna get you where you need to go.
So do I know how to read a book? Yes, ignoring the obvious, of course, but this is a book that means to truly "absorb" a book. They use an analogy regarding baseball, whether a ball is "caught" or not. If a reader does not "catch" the book, then the work they do to bridge the gap of knowledge is the "enlightenment" that the reader will experience. Really, this book is commendable for trying to address that people do not indeed know "how" to read a book, that they are pre-fed an understanding and interpretation to pass a course or expected to be well-read by a societal peer pressure at the cost of never truly understanding a book past a surface level.
Some flaws: Although I wouldn't call this a self-help book, strictly speaking, I think that it has its hallmarks in the way it occasionally negs the reader and makes them doubt themselves. It takes on some self-deprecation, in saying that few people ever perfectly understand a book, and those that do are very few and far between. That the learning, and the effort, is in trying. However, their methodology to get to that is flawed as a result. They write a tautology at some point that suggests that reading something by an author means the reader must agree or disagree, or defer judgement if they feel they have not understood the material in full. Disagreement, of course, means that the reader must have a learned reason why that is not the case (one not driven by emotion). They then turn this tautology on their own work, saying that if the reader accepts all the words said as being true, then it is their imperative to read in the style that Adler and van Doren dictate.
No.
This book does almost nothing to talk about reading with different critical lenses, like Marxism, or semiotics, or other modes of thinking that, while not guaranteed to be the solution, is better than the blind charge that this book tries to encourage. They begrudgingly give advice on how to use reference books and specify that the history of words. They're right to at least feel suspicious that a reference book will taint a reader's perception of how to understand a word or concept. But outright dismissing Shakespeare editions that have that reference sheet baked into it puts a lot of faith in the reader that if they are not intelligent, that they will not grow frustrated with the struggle. This is simply my opinion, to be sure, but what I find contradictory is the idea that the reader must accept this style of reading as the best option while in the same book admitting that "few have truly understood a book." Really? Does that include the authors themselves, who have placed hundreds of works in their recommended reading list? And if they have failed to understand the reading, does that not mean that their own methodology is flawed? Are they not obligated to propose a better alternative to what they have done? I certainly do not have one--as flawed as their tautology is, I follow it in some degree. But I think it's a bit much to write a book literally declaring it is the way "to read a book" and then shrug and say "Well, but who has ever read a book, really?"
I picked this during my Ph.D because the classes weren't as demanding as I wanted them to be (or to involve something a little more dynamic and a little less like busywork.) I was feeling a little intellectually flabby and even the book itself was a difficult read. I'm saying this because if you are an English Major, you likely already know most of what this book proposes and more. But if you don't study English and want to crack the code a little, this is gonna get you where you need to go.