Ammar Alshukry – How to read a book
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the four levels of reading in a book: getting an understanding of the author, knowing the main headings, reading around the book, and engaging with the book at a higher level. The speaker emphasizes the importance of reading at a personal level for optimal engagement.
AI: Summary ©
Have you guys, if you've never read it,
at least get a summary of it, of
a great book called How to Read a
Book by something Adler.
I forgot his first name.
But How to Read a Book is very
simple.
The guy used to be a professor at
Columbia University.
I think he wrote the book in the
1920s.
And he used to have courses discussing the
great books of literature, of Western literature.
And he thought that his reading of the
books was very deep, and he discovered that
it was very superficial.
And then he presents, after a lot of
research, introspection and reflection and exposure, how a
person should actually read a book.
And that's one of the reasons why, when
we read books, we might read a book
from cover to cover.
And then afterwards, when people ask us what
was the book about, we're like, I honestly
don't remember, because our reading of the book
was very, very superficial.
So he mentions four levels of reading, four
different ways.
The first one is just kind of getting
an understanding of what the book is.
So, for example, many times people will get
a book, and they won't read the introduction,
because that's boring.
And they won't read the table of contents,
and they just open the book like it's
a novel.
And if you're reading nonfiction, it's not a
novel.
You don't read it from just the beginning
to the end.
And that's a picture of how a lot
of people read books.
So he suggests that, number one, you want
your first reading to just be kind of
an overview of the book.
You want to understand what are the main
arguments of the author, what are you looking
to get out of this book, what are
they presenting.
And so where do you find that?
You find that by reading the blurb that's
on the inside of the book.
A lot of times that's actually a summary
of the book.
You're reading the back.
What is, you know, the author is summarizing
in two or three paragraphs, basically, what they're
presenting with the entire book.
So don't skip that.
Read it.
Then read the table of contents.
You'll get an understanding of everything that is
being presented in this book.
And then read the introduction of the author.
Once you look through these three things, you
have a good idea of what the book
is.
And then when you skim through the book,
you just kind of look and see what
are the things that stand out, what are
the main headings.
And just by doing that, in five minutes,
you'll have a good understanding of what this
book is.
Then there's a second level where you're basically
reading through the book and you're getting an
understanding of what are the major arguments.
What are the major arguments of the author?
And then the third level of reading is
you actually doing a critical reading of the
book.
And what he suggests in that is that
you engage in conversation with the author.
And one of the reasons why books are
boring to read for those who hold that
books are boring to read is because they're
not engaging with the author at all.
It's just being lectured, lectured, lectured.
And lectures get exhausting.
A person is just talking and talking and
talking and talking.
You're just sitting there as opposed to a
conversation.
A conversation, you might have a conversation for
four or five hours with a person if
it's engaging.
So if you approach a book like it
is a conversation where you're sitting there and
you're underlining and you're disagreeing with the author
and you're questioning the author, and you're asking
questions and you're doing all of that in
the margins of the book, it becomes a
more intense experience but it also becomes a
more rewardable experience or a more rewarding experience.
And then the last level of reading the
book is reading around the book.
So you're reading in the field around the
book.
You're reading other books by the author or
you're reading other books on the topic by
other authors so that you have a more
comprehensive view of where this book falls in
the place of that field.
But the point here that I want you
to know is the idea of when you're
reading any book that you bring it to
a higher level of engagement, understanding.
And every book in your library, you should
at least know what's inside the book.
You should at least go through the process
of writing a table of contents and sometimes
even writing your own table of contents because
what's important to the author might not be
important to you and what's not important to
the author might be important to you.
So writing your own table of contents, engaging
with the book at that personal level, and
a lot of it is.