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Improve your reading by asking the right questions
Reading a book other than for entertainment is to ask the book questions.
There are four key questions you should ask about any book:
- What is the book about as a whole? Find the leading theme and how the author develops this theme by subdividing it into subordinate themes.
- What are the main ideas and arguments that constitute the author's message?
- Is the book true in part or whole? When you understand a book, you should make up your own mind. Knowing the author's mind is not enough.
- Why is this book significant? Why does the author think you should know these things?
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Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow
MORTIMER J. ADLER
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How to make a book your own
Asking a book questions as you read is not enough. You should also attempt to answer the questions with a pencil in hand. When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it. When you write in it, you develop full ownership of it.
Why you should write in your book:
- It keeps you awake to its content.
- When reading is active, you are thinking, and thinking expresses itself in words, spoken or written.
- Writing your reactions down helps you to remember.
- Reading is a conversation between you and the author. Marking a book is expressing your differences or agreements.
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How to mark a book
When you are willing to engage with the book by writing in it, you pay the author the highest respect.
- Underline the important points.
- Draw vertical lines at the margin when a passage is too long to underline.
- Emphasise the most important statements with an asterisk.
- Put numbers in the margin to show a sequence of points made in the natural development of an argument.
- Put page numbers of other pages in the margin to show where else the author makes the same points.
- Circle keywords or phrases.
- Write your questions and answers in the margin or at the top or bottom of the pages.
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IDEAS CURATED BY
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