How to properly read a book

I bet you already know how to read a book. You were taught in elementary school.

But do you know how to read well ?

There is a difference between reading for understanding and reading for information.

If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t given much thought to how you read. And how you read makes a massive difference to knowledge accumulation.

A lot of people confuse knowing the name of something with understanding.

A useful heuristic: Anything easily digested is reading for information.

Consider the newspaper, are you truly learning anything new? Do you consider the writer your superior when it comes to knowledge in the subject? Odds are probably not. That means you’re reading for information. It means you’re likely to parrot an opinion that isn’t yours as if you had done the work.

This is how most people read.

Mortimer Adler literally wrote the book on reading. In How To Read A Book, Adler identifies four levels of reading:

1. Elementary Reading
2. Inspectional Reading
3. Analytical Reading
4. Syntopical Reading

Before we can improve our reading skills, we need to understand the differences in the reading levels. They are thought of as levels because you can’t move to a higher level without a firm understanding of the previous one — they are cumulative.