![]() The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection. Adler argues that to avoid this error we must distinguish between how we learn into instruction and discovery. The Greeks had a name for people who have read too widely and not well, sophomores.īeing widely read and well-read are not the same thing. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their ABC’s, cannot read at all. Montaigne speaks of “an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it.” You can’t be enlightened unless you are informed, however you can be informed but not enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. … if you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. This is the difference between being knowing the name of something and knowing something. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth. To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. The internet and Amazon have made this much easier with ratings and book reviews.Īnd if you can read for understanding, you need not worry about reading for information or entertainment as, being less demanding, they will take care of themselves. So half the battle of reading for understanding is to identify and select works from someone (or a group of people) who know more about a subject than we do. ![]() ![]() The easiest way to improve our understanding is from people who understand more about the subject than we do. Either way, our understanding has changed. After reading works by authors who know more about a subject than we do, our understanding is changed … it may be the case that we better understand something or perhaps we understand that our understanding was incomplete. There is no shock, no moment of … that doesn’t make sense.Īlternatively, we can try to read something by someone who knows more about the subject than we do. These things give us more information but don’t improve our understanding. Reading for information is the one in which we read media or anything else that’s easily digestible. Reading for entertainment is self-explanatory. We can read to acquire information and facts or we can read to learn something new and improve our understanding. Reading For Understanding or InformationĪssuming we’re not reading for entertainment, there are two things we generally want to get from reading. That doesn’t mean you agree with them, only that you understood them. Success in reading is determined to the extent that you receive what the writer intended to communicate. The person who can perform more of them is better able to read. It consists of a large number of separate acts, all of which must be performed in a good reading. Reading is a complex activity, just as writing is. And when it comes to reading to learn something or reading for information something the more active your reading habits the better. The only difference is that some reading is more active than others. All reading, to some degree, is active reading. There is no such thing as passive reading. ![]() Since that time the book has been updated and recast many times, most notably by Charles van Doren in the 1970’s. Mortimer Adler originally published How To Read A Book in 1940. They speak to us, consult with us and join us in a living and intense intimacy.” - Petrarch “Books give delisght to the very marrow of one’s bones. This article, the first in a multi-part series on improving our reading skills, outlines the four levels of reading. The key is not simply to read more but rather be selective about what we reading and how we are reading. Picking up a book and reading the words is the easy part. My Hero, Charlie Munger, said it best “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.” One of the secrets to acquiring knowledge is to read.
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