In Mortimer Adler’s landmark tome, How to Read a Book, the distinguished author offers a four-part framework for the kinds of reading. These are elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical reading. Each level builds upon the one before; the highest level involves all three lower levels. Today we will look in depth at two levels, inspectional and analytical reading. These two kinds of reading will be the most helpful in doing research. While most of my notes from Adler’s advice is on reading books, the same principles apply to long-form essays. The final section of this post deals specifically with essays, too. Whether an essay or book, fiction or non-fiction, Adler’s wisdom will help you to understand and remember more of the material you read.
The elementary reading level is, as you might expect, the very basic level of reading, which most readers learn in elementary school. If you can string letters and words together and comprehend their meaning, you’ve accomplished this level. The trouble is, most of us aren’t taught anything beyond this. Most of us aren’t taught to look for to clues to explain an author’s message or how to glean as much information as possible. How do we read with the goal of understanding the author’s meaning and intention?
Be an Active Reader
When most people read a book, they may or may not read the back cover. Rarely do they read the table of contents or the preface. It is a very common practice to read as little of the book as possible, while still having read the body. That is, to only read the first page of chapter one through the end page of the final chapter. After closing the cover, our reader may perhaps give five minutes of thought to what they’ve spent hours of time reading. This is ineffective for several reasons. First, the material in the front and back of the book contains a wealth of information and exists to eliminate confusion for you, the reader. Second, you likely have questions about the material you’re reading, which is good. However, you won’t remember to ask and resolve those questions without writing them down. Most of us won’t remember most of what we read unless we take notes and summarize that information for ourselves. This article will outline strategies for reading to understand and retain this information.
By choosing to read a book, the reader has agreed to the responsibility of doing the work to understand the author. We often think that it is the author’s job to grab our attention and explain their argument in an entertaining manner; that somehow we’ll remember the really good books with no effort. Yet, we don’t realize that we need to meet the author halfway, if we intend to learn, understand and leave with real conclusions. Being familiar with the auxiliary information is part of this responsibility.
Your objective as a reader is to work to understand the problem the author is addressing, and be able to summarize their arguments for doing so. To do this, we need to read actively. Passive reading is simple; lay back in a comfortable chair or in bed, open a book you aren’t particularly interested in, and in a few minutes you’ll be dozing off after re-reading the same sentence twelve times. Active reading requires more attention and interaction from the reader. If passive reading is about putting in as little effort as possible to understand the author’s message, active reading is about making sure to pick up as many clues from the author as possible. Sit down to read in a place where you are likely to stay awake. Choose a book which strikes you as interesting or lively or otherwise attractive. Read with a pen in hand, so as to mark important passages or ideas. Don’t struggle to understand a word or phrase; continue onward to understand the context and the big picture. Look up words or examples after your reading, not during. Read key sections of the book, which passive readers often overlook, and discover even more clues as to the conclusion the author lands on.
Inspectional Reading
Inspectional reading is an abbreviated reading session of looking through the book to understand what it is about. In a few minutes – an hour at most- you should grasp the type of book it is, the problem the book addresses, the author’s premise, and the topics the author covers in making his or her case. How might we do this?
It’s helpful to know that a good author or writer is seeking to help the reader understand better. It is the job of the author to present his argument clearly, and to describe the problem they address and to detail why his solution works. Authors often identify right in the title, or subtitle, the purpose of the book. You can often tell without even opening the book what it is about and who it is for. If the title is full of obscure jargon, you have a clue that it is written for a technical audience in a specific industry. If it is written in “plain English,” this tells you the author is writing for a lay audience.
There are two kinds of inspectional reading: skimming and superficial reading. When we begin a new book, the first step is to skim through the book, stopping every few pages to read paragraphs here and there from most of the chapters. You don’t need to read pages at a time or understand entire stories and their relation to the main topic. You are simply familiarizing yourself with what the book is about and how it is written. Be sure to read the last two to three pages. Most authors summarize their work in the final pages of their books. If there is an epilogue, find the final pages of the work itself.
Next, read the title page, table of contents, and back cover. The preface, index, references, and publisher’s notes are all there to help you more clearly understand the author’s meaning. Authors help their readers by describing their chapters in the table of contents. This unfortunately seems to be less common than it once was, but when you find a book which takes the time to detail the chapters, be sure to read through them. The title and subtitles of each chapter usually summarize the information presented and often describe the main elements of that chapter. The title page will tell you when the book was written which gives you context. The back cover usually summarizes the book into three or four sentences. From this information, you can form a picture of what the author intends to say and how they’ve structured their argument; a summary of the entire work.
You should also read the publisher’s note, if there is one. This will explain the objective the author or publisher intended to meet, and especially with older books, clarifies questions about translations and differences in editions.
The second step of superficial reading is to read the entire book without stopping. Superficial – as Adler notes, is a provocative term and often presents a negative connotation. His direction is to read the entire book through – not stopping to research or look up unfamiliar terms and phrases. Rather, the idea is to get through the text as quickly as possible; to have a superficial understanding of the book. The goal is to grasp the main idea, not understand each argument intimately. Get through the book. Then, upon a deeper reading, you can slow down and digest the more technical or unfamiliar parts. You should leave the inspectional stage understanding the problem to be solved and how the author goes about solving it.
Demanding Readers
Active readers are demanding readers. Demanding readers ask questions of the text and work to understand and make the information their own. Adler offers four questions, which he says should be asked of everything we read. Asking these questions while you read, and building this habit makes the books above your level accessible. These questions will improve your reading skill and comprehension as often as you use them.
The four questions readers should ask of anything, book or otherwise, they read are:
- What is the book about?
- What is the author’s goal?
- Does the author accomplish this?
- What of it?
Phrased another way, what are the consequences of the author’s conclusions? Now that you possess this knowledge what actions must you take? Perhaps it’s as simple as correcting your understanding of a misunderstood claim. It could be as revolutionary as altering your stance on a social issue. Often it’s somewhere in the middle, like changing your evening routine as a result of reading about the importance of sleep. When we read a book, and determine that the author’s perspective was correct, we need to reflect on what the accuracy of that position means for our lives.
Analytical Reading
Once we know what a book is about, and how the author builds her argument, we can move on to analytical reading. Analytical reading is reading to understand the author’s goals. Now that we know the book’s main idea – after an inspectional reading – we can begin to dive more deeply into the book. The purpose of analytical reading is not to gain mastery of the topic, or even to form an opinion about the larger topic. The purpose is to understand what the author is attempting to communicate.
We need to understand the whole of the book, each of its parts, and how they all fit together. We will break this down into two stages. Adler proposes the first of these is understanding the unity of the book – to understand the whole message of the book or essay; the “big idea” an author is trying to convey. The second is to understand the structure of the work; to understand each smaller block individually and how they fit together to create the whole. You should be able to summarize the work, as well as outline the parts which make up the whole.
We’ll look first at summarizing the book. A good summary should state the purpose of the author and touch on the manner in which the author makes his or her case over the course of the work. It should be only three sentences or so, brief enough to understand the plot in a nutshell, but with enough to detail to describe what makes this title unique. There are four questions involved in this stage:
- Classify the book according to its kind.
- What, as succinctly as possible, is the book about?
- What are the major parts of the book and how do they relate to one another?
- What problem or problems is the author trying to solve?
Next, understand the structure of the piece. The structure of a book or essay can be thought of as the frame of a house. Underneath your walls and ceiling, are wooden and/or steel beams giving the house it’s structure and keeping the entire building standing. Under the ideas and examples illustrating the work lie the author’s structure; the main ideas or objectives underpin the entire work.
The best way to understand and recognize the structure of a book or essay is to outline the work in your notes as you read. Keep track of the “big ideas,” and the smaller points which build out those ideas. You should understand how the information is organized and how each argument relates to the main question the author identified.
If we were to summarize a book, such as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, for example, we would need to identify the main question Smith addresses in the book, and the arguments he employs. This only needs to be three to four sentences.
My summary is:
The Wealth of Nations seeks to illustrate how any economy built on a divided workforce functions. Smith identifies the three contributors of wealth as the wages of the laborers, the rent on the use of the land, and the profits made on the products’ cost. These three sources interact and make up the price of an item. The author compares three nations with three different systems of economies and pushes for a system based on free trade.
Adler’s summary is as follows:
“This is an inquiry into the source of national wealth in any economy that is built on a division of labor, considering the relatoin of the wages paid labor, the profits returned to capital, and the rent owed the landowner, as the prime factors in the price of commodities. It discusses the various ways in which capital can be more or less gainfully employed, and relates the origin and use of money to the accumulation and employment of capital. Examining the development of opulenec in different nations and under different conditions, it compares the several systems of political economy, and argues for the beneficence of free trade.”
In both, the main problem the author addresses is explained, as well as a summary of the arguments the author employs to make his point.
In the second stage of analytical thinking, we look more closely at the author’s structure. Four steps are involved in this stage:
- Understand the author’s key terms.
- Deal with the most important sentences.
- Know the author’s arguments by finding and marking or writing out complete sentences.
- Determine which of the author’s problems he has solved, which he has not, and whether he knows of the unsolved problems.
In looking at how the author has structured the piece, the first thing to look for is the key terms and words. Find the important words by looking through the index to see what topics and terms are used most frequently. In your reading, take note of summary sentences or sentences which define terms or problems. If the author is taking the time to provide a definition, it’s because they want to make sure you understand the term as they will use it in the context of the book or essay. When you come across critical sentences or phrases, mark them as important, which I’ll detail in the next section. If the most important ideas and concepts aren’t in summarized in the book, write out your own summary of them in your own words. Finally, now that you understand the problem, and the author’s arguments, you need to determine what has been solved and what has not. An excellent book may only provide a part of a suggested solution. Authors usually acknowledge when they only address a particular aspect of a complex problem. You should keep this in mind when asking yourself whether all the problems have been addressed. Essays may not even provide a solution so much as they can reframe a perspective. In analyzing a book, we need to know what has been addressed, and what remains, and whether the author has acknowledged the remaining issues or not.
This level is also when you should also go back to read the preface and review the references after reading through the book. These provide insight into what the author was trying to accomplish, but also can sway your understanding of the material. While your first pass through the book is to understand the main ideas, an analytical reading is the time to fill in gaps and round out your understanding of why the author included and excluded certain information. The reference section will also point you to other quality titles on related topics to continue exploring.
Taking Notes
Taking notes while you read is the best way to ensure you understand what the author is saying. Writing out your own thoughts and questions makes the material your own. There are countless systems for taking notes, and it really comes down to finding what works best for you. My own system is a combination of the Cornell system of note-taking while reading, then Sönke Ahrens’ slip-box system, as detailed in his book, How to Take Smart Notes for long-term digital notes. (Here is a long-form article from Tiago Forte on the book.) I combine hand-written notes and my digital Evernote notebooks to process my ideas and takeaways, and have them available at a moment’s notice.
By not taking notes or writing down anything as or after you’ve learned it, you are effectively guaranteeing you won’t remember most of what you spent hours reading. When you slow the reading process down, just slightly, work through the ideas presented, and taking notes of your thinking along the way, you build your understanding and grow. You’re already investing time into reading the book; write out notes on what you learn, remember more of that information, and reap more from that investment. As Steve Cheney notes, by not writing about what you’re learning, you’re stopping at the easier ask.
General note-taking tips:
- Capture ideas quickly and in your own words. When you go back through the material you can fix errors or pull entire quotes. Stay in the flow of your train of thought and the book’s information.
- Take your own thoughts and questions down. Don’t simply copy sentences off of the page. The difference between understanding and memorizing material is that the first forces you to process the author’s ideas into your own words. When you simply copy words, your mind isn’t processing them, which makes them less meaningful, making it unlikely you will remember that information long-term.
- When you’ve finished the book, set it aside for a few days, and come back to it. This will allow you to think over the material, then look at it with some distance and see what still amazes or confuses.
- Underline the important or striking ideas. Use vertical lines on passages which are too long to underline.
- Highlight only the most important key ideas or themes. (I use blue for the main idea, and pink for secondary ideas, in print and on the Kindle app to streamline my system.)
- Use numbers to indicate the order in which ideas appear on your outline.
- Ask questions.
For note-taking online:
- Use a highlighter tool to mark what you find interesting. You could also copy and paste into Evernote or other note-taking software.
- Summarize your thoughts and takeaways. Why is this essay timely? What are the author’s conclusions? Did they support their conclusion in the essay? What are your conclusions? What other works were referenced?
- Reading online, as we’ve discussed, can be illuminating because so much online is highly concentrated.
Putting it into practice:
Take notes quickly while you’re reading, then go back and review them. In my own reading, I mark important questions, quotes, or ideas with sticky tabs while I’m reading, and take notes, summarize chapters or sections, and ask questions on a piece of paper. About a week after completing the book, I go back to each tab to see if it still seems important. If so, I highlight or number the passage as being a key idea or underlining interesting but less critical sentences. I’ll also write down books referenced for further reading on the topic. I type these notes into Evernote, making this a second review of the material. Then, the following week, I’ll revisit the notes and organize them into my own system prioritizing the takeaways, questions, and ideas inspired by the book, then including quotes and the outline after my thoughts. This system allows me to handle the material at least three separate times, reviewing, thinking through, and remembering the information. These books and notes then show up in my writing, whether it’s my monthly recommendation email or elsewhere. For articles, I don’t review three times, but I go back through twice and add notes or ideas about how those ideas relate to ideas in other notes. The best way to remember what you read is to put it to use.
Reading Essays Online
As more information shifts online and away from major networks or publishers, more articles and essays are published online. Essays and articles are different forms which accomplish different purposes. An article is a shorter piece of writing, tightly focused on a single problem, and with very little argument building or conversation. Articles are usually practical in nature, and simply convey information. Essays are longer pieces of writing where an author poses a question, then takes the reader along their line of thinking to reach a conclusion together. I recommend reading essays as opposed to articles because a quality essay will supply questions and perspectives around the topic. Essays also shows the author’s line of reasoning, making the essay a great introduction to new topics. You can spend twenty to thirty minutes exploring a new perspective and the arguments around it.
The best practices for reading books also apply to reading essays. You should be able to summarize the essay as well as be familiar with its structure. Essays may use footnotes, which should be treated like references in a book and explored after your initial reading.
Skim the essay.
As with any reading material, we need to understand the problem the essay is addressing and how the author is going about it. Identify the key words and ideas the author uses and the argument(s) they use to build their case. Look at the introductory and ending paragraphs. Much like a book, where the author introduces the topic and explains its timeliness, then summarizes in the final pages, most essays will outline the subject in the beginning paragraphs, and summarize the essay in the next to last paragraph.
Make your own outline.
Understand the author’s structure and argument. Identify the most important ideas, then the secondary ideas, and create your own outline of how the information fits together.
Take Notes.
This may seem redundant, but it bears repeating because so very few people take notes on what they read, especially online. Writing is a physical action which requires your brain to be more engaged with what you’re learning. Writing requires you to summarize and think through the information in order to get it down on paper. You have to make a choice about what gets written down, which means you are deciding between more and less important ideas. As you process the most, lesser, and least important ideas and sentences, you are creating your own outline of the material. As a result of thinking through and understanding these ideas, you reap the benefit of being more likely to remember what you’ve read, why it’s important, and how it relates to other areas.
Click the links.
Do click the links, but after you’ve read the essay completely. As with a book, don’t interrupt your reading by looking up the references and starting down a rabbit trail. Understand the original document’s purpose, and click on the links – or look up unfamiliar names and words – to understand how they function within the context of the essay. As you learn about these new concepts they will present new ideas which you can then follow for more inspiration and learning. This builds the habit of curiosity and a willingness to learn. Footnotes and links often touch on topics which the author chose not to include in that particular essay. By reading through them you continue learning about the conversation after finishing the essay.
The Twelve points we’ve covered today, encompassing Adler’s inspectional and analytical stages of reading are:
- What is the book about?
- What is the author’s goal?
- Does the author accomplish this?
- What of it?
- Classify the book according to its kind.
- What, as succinctly as possible, is the book about?
- What are the major parts of the book and how do they relate to one another?
- What problem or problems is the author trying to solve?
- Understand the author’s key terms.
- Deal with the most important sentences.
- Know the author’s arguments by finding or writing out complete sentences.
- Determine which of the author’s problems he has solved, which he has not, and whether he knows of the unsolved problems.
Reading whether in print or online is critical to lifelong learning. When we shift our objectives from reading for entertainment to reading to learn, a new world of possibility opens to us. We prepare and take the reading more seriously. We learn more from books or essays. We make connections to ideas and concepts we’re already familiar with. We find ways to use the new things we learn. Ultimately, as Adler notes, “we move from a place of understanding less to understanding more,” which allows us to make better decisions.
This is the fourth in a series on using the internet as a learning device. You can read part one here, and part two here, and part three here.
