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4 questions

What is the book about as a whole?

How to get more out of reading by taking a structured, deliberate approach.

What is being said in detail, and how?

It’s good to skim a book (read it inspectionally) in order to determine if it is useful to read analytically. When broaching a subject, it’s good to read multiple books on a subject, which is referred to as reading syntopically

Is the book true, in whole or in part?

The book is mostly true. There are a few points that are outdated, such as the best way to using reading aids (such as encyclopedias), but everything else strikes me as very true and is something I’ll be carrying forward.

What of it?

Taking a more deliberate approach to reading enables me to become a better reader which in turns enables me to expand my knowledge, which is the whole point of reading.

• Read through the hard parts

Outline

The First Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Finding What a Book Is About

1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole.
4. Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve.

The Second Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Interpreting a Book’s Contents

5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words.
6. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences.
7. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences.
8. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.

The Third Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Criticizing a Book as a Communication of Knowledge

A. General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette

9. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. (Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgment, until you can say “I understand.”)
10. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously.
11. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.

B. Special Criteria for Points of Criticism

12. Show wherein the author is uninformed.
13. Show wherein the author is misinformed.
14. Show wherein the author is illogical.
15. Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete.

Note: Of these last four, the first three are criteria for disagreement. Failing in all of these, you must agree, at least in part, although you may suspend judgment on the whole, in the light of the last point.

I. Surveying the Field Preparatory to Syntopical Reading

1. Create a tentative bibliography of your subject by recourse to library catalogues, advisors, and bibliographies in books.
2. Inspect all of the books on the tentative bibliography to ascertain which are germane to your subject, and also to acquire a clearer idea of the subject. Note: These two steps are not, strictly speaking, chronologically distinct; that is, the two steps have an effect on each other, with the second, in particular, serving to modify the first.

II. Syntopical Reading of the Bibliography Amassed in Stage I

1. Inspect the books already identified as relevant to your subject in Stage I in order to find the most relevant passages.
2. Bring the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology of the subject that all, or the great majority, of the authors can be interpreted as employing, whether they actually employ the words or not.
3. Establish a set of neutral propositions for all of the authors by framing a set of questions to which all or most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers, whether they actually treat the questions explicitly or not.
4. Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an issue or another. You should remember that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, but that it sometimes has to be constructed by interpretation of the authors’ views on matters that may not have been their primary concern.
5. Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject. More general issues should precede less general ones, and relations among issues should be clearly indicated.

Note: Dialectical detachment or objectivity should, ideally, be maintained throughout. One way to insure this is always to accompany an interpretation of an author’s views on an issue with an actual quotation from his text.

Misc Notes

Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit. When we speak of a man as skilled in any way, we do not mean that he knows the rules of making or doing something, but that he possesses the habit of making or doing it. Of course, it is true that knowing the rules, more or less explicitly, is a condition of getting the skill. You cannot follow rules you do not know. Nor can you acquire an artistic habit-any craft or skill—without following rules. The art as something that can be taught consists of rules to be followed in operation. The art as something learned and possessed consists of the habit that results from operating according to the rules.

You should know what kind of book you’re reading

• Fiction/novel/play vs expository
  • Is gone wth the wind a romance or history of the south? It’s a novel
  • Arthur C. Clarke and Heinlein have science in them, but that doesn’t make them science books
• An expository book is one that conveys knowledge. There a various kinds of expository books.

X-Raying a books

Rule 4: find out what he authors problems were. I.e what questions does the book try to answer?_

• If someone can’t repeat your assertion back to you then they have no basis for agreement o disagreement
• Disagreement is futile agitation unless it is undertaken with hope that it will lead to a resolution.
• Knowledge is supported by evidence. Otherwise it is opinion

1. Complete task of understanding
2. Don’t be

Good controversy should not be a quarrel about assumptions.

Disagreements can be:

You are uninformed You are misinformed You’re illogical You’re analysis is incomplete

Must provide rationale for dasfreement and why it s relevant

“Here I information you should have had”

Thomas Hobbes if I read as many books as most men do, I’d be as dull-witted as they are.

• If you think you understand, try to illustrate a concrete point
• Author cannot give exact advice, but just geneal rules that apply to a lot of things of the same sort
• A practical book should state rules and underlying principles
• Some practical books ;like this one) are lists of rules with supporting arguments. Others are primarily concerned with the principles that generate rules
• You can always yells a principled book is practical because the nature of the problems. Are about a field of human behavior in which men can do better or worse
• Be clear on what end you are trying to achieve when writing a book, because the reader may disagree
• No one makes serious practical judgements without emotion
• Reading a poem out loud helps you understand because your ear is offended by misplaced emphasis
• If you read history to see what happened, you won’t learn t main thing it ha to teach
• Mystery well you should know what it is about and what is not about
• Can tell a lot about current writing by the words they use. Some words in a contemporary setting stir up emotions
• Technologists often write assuming some mix knowledge that it isn’t accessible to lay people.
• Inspect all books in bib before reading any analytically

5 steps of syntopical reading

Book is being read for the light I may throw on your problem, not it’s own sake.