"How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

>obvious guidelines to anyone who has been to school or university
>basically no guidance or discussion on fiction/poetry aside from "lol fiction is mostly for entertainment"
>"Syntopical" reading is so difficult (yet anyone who has written a thesis has done a literature review like what they're saying)

Thanks for recommending this babby tier trash, Veeky Forums. Maybe it would have been useful if I was a kid. DON'T FALL FOR THE MEME AND READ THIS, BROS. IT'S A FUCKING WASTE OF TIME.

Here's the "rules" to save you hours of reading:
>Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
>State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
>Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole.
>Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve.
>Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words.
>Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences.
>Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences.
>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.
>Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book.
>Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously.
>Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.
>Show wherein the author is uninformed.
>Show wherein the author is misinformed.
>Show wherein the author is illogical.
>Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete.

Yeah it's a total meme that could've been shortened to 100 pages but instead he keeps on rambling

Archived somewhere is an excellent thread in which user reviews a whole bunch of those kinds of books. IIRC user agreed that that one sucked.

I recommend Nicholas A. Basbanes' books.
And some of Jacques Barzun (yes I'm the same guy that's shilling him all the time. READ 'JACQUES BARZUN' PEOPLE.)

>How to Read a Book

Ahahah what a fucking stupid ass idea: that there is a certain way to read a book, that books should be efficiently read and decompiled like a computer

Fuck off. Everyone reads differently. Every book is a different journey.

If you need someone to tell you how to read your as dumb as an aesthetic-obssessed brainlet on Veeky Forums.

Learn to think for yourself.

should've read ezra pound's ABC of literature

link? is it in the current archives or one of the deeper ones

Thank you user

Honestly don't know. Try searching for this book title plus others like that "like a professor" one.

I also got memed into reading this thinking it might help me with literature in the future or teaching certain classes. The book was way too long and as others have pointed out shortened a lot.

The only thing of value I got out of it was for reading of philosophical texts. Writing notes while you read and the terms that the author uses and their definition come in handy when trying to comprehend a text.

Also I guess the canon list is not bad but there are tons of those on the internet these days.

If all you got out of this book was an algorithm then you have missed the point.

>"How to Read a Book"
>It's a book

Are there any good books like this?

check your good schooling privilege

yeah its shit.

you should check out franciene prose's book how to read like a writer. much much more useful than adlers

How are you supposed to read "How to Read a Book" if you don't know?

Why would you read "How to Read a Book" if you already do?

I'm on page 52, thqnks for spoiling it, user. You must be fun at Halloween parties

...

What books by Basbanes and Barzun would you recommend?

He thinks I'm taking this shit seriously ha

"I don't even read the books I write three times" - William Buckley

If you read the book you would know that it's just a lot of nice tips for combing through a high volume of non-fiction. It has come in handy for me, I'll admit.

wud he men by dis?

Sounds like a book about how to deconstruct a book for the sake of answering questions and writing essays in a university literature class while having no actual bearing on how to read a book like a normal functional human being.

OP you describe something I would write if I wanted to make people hate reading, or I wanted to tell someone who already hated reading what they wanted to hear.

It's no surprise the author has contempt for fiction. He clearly doesn't care about literature at all.

it was said while interviewing Adler if that helps you grasp the meaning of the statement

>tfw can't read books so you can't learn to read books by reading a book