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How to Read a Book Summary
About How to Read a Book Book
With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material.
A CNN Book of the Week: “Explains not just why we should read books, but how we should read them. It's masterfully done.” –Farheed Zakaria
Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text.
Also included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works.
Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests you can use measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension, and speed.
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Hi Deepstash. I want to see how this app works, so here are the levels of reading I learned about in Mortimer Adler’s book, ‘How to Read a Book’.
Types of Reading
The way we read a book, article, or paper changes depending on our goals and our skills. It’s useful to think about how we are reading in order to make sure we spend our time and energy in the most effective way. In How to Read a Book, the philosopher Mortimer Adler gives us 4 types of reading to consider.
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Elementary Reading
The most basic level of reading is called elementary reading. As you might guess, this is the sort of reading that we learn in elementary school. Although we learn the basics of reading in elementary school, this is the most fundamental sort of reading and sometimes we have to add to our skill in it throughout life. This stage of reading involves recognizing letters, understanding grammar, and knowing the meanings of words.
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Inspectional Reading
The next stage of reading is called inspectional reading. At this point, we are reading through a book in order to see what it is and judge whether or not we should spend more time with it. There are two types of inspectional reading:
- Systematic skimming
- Superficial reading
During systematic skimming, we check the parts of the book such as the table of contents or the index to see what material the book covers. This gives us a superficial understanding of what the author is trying to accomplish.
During superficial reading, we might read straight through the book without critical assessment.
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Content block list UPDATED PROD 2
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UPDATED 3 C1 s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s sC2 s s d f g f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f f d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d dd d
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True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.
MORTIMER J ALDER
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You Dont Know How To Really Read
Reading is not just about recognising letters and getting sound out of the words. It's more than that
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