Ammar Alshukry – How to read a book

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.