How to Read a Book

This guide to reading sets out four levels, each more demanding than the last. Elementary reading comes first. Inspectional reading follows: getting hold of a book's structure and argument quickly. Analytical reading aims at full understanding, and syntopical reading sets several books on one subject side by side to build a synthesis of their ideas.

The authors, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, argue that most readers stop at reading for information. That habit, they say, leaves the larger rewards of the deeper levels untouched. The text first appeared in 1940 and was substantially revised in 1972 with Van Doren.

This is a practical, instructional work of non-fiction. Reading becomes a live exchange between writer and reader, and the book teaches concrete methods: pinning down an author's key words, picking out the central propositions, and rebuilding the argument step by step. Separate sections give approaches suited to poetry, history, science and fiction.

It is useful for students, for anyone who reads for work or study, and for readers who want to get more from serious books. Expect a method to be practised rather than a narrative to be followed, with the effort of the reader as the central demand.