“How To Read” Series

This means that by using the articles in the “how to read” series and a simple checklist you can read the hardest books and understand more of what you read. You now have everything you need to get started and become a better reader, just find a good book.

Detailed Reading Series: 2a. Important Sentences and Propositions

Once you have found the important words and know how they are used with precision, you can begin searching for the authors important sentences which are made up of his important words.

The sentences that are most important to you are the ones you do not understand. The sentences most important for the author are the ones that express his judgments in his arguments (the things he agrees and disagrees with ad the reasons he gives for doing so). You must stop and examine these sentences carefully, read through them slowly. Do not read everything with the same speed and importance, this will be a big mistake.

How to find the most important sentences

1. Look for transition words which lead you to arguments and solutions.

2. Form questions and wonder about the meaning of a passage.

3. If you have already marked the important words you should have no trouble finding the  important sentences.

4. Look for structural details such of sequences ,then in the sequences beginnings and ends  this should help you put together arguments and propositions, conclusions and premises. ‘pay special attention to the sentences you do not understand not the ones that interest you.

How to find out what the sentences mean

1. Find the most important words.  The sentences that contain the authors most important words and terms are bound to have some significance. Pay special attention to those (how to find important words and terms).

2. Know basic grammar.  You should know the relationship between verbs and nouns, subordinate clauses and independent clauses etc.  you should be able to dissect the important sentences, which will help you further determine its meaning.

Detailed Reading Series: 2b. Figuring out the authors argument

In this step you are finding the authors most important paragraphs and arguments, this may be easy if you have done the last few steps (finding important words and sentences) or the author has organized his writing.

Outline the argument by:

1. Identifying introductions and conclusions.  This will help you by giving you a summary of the argument and narrowing down the general area that contains the argument.

2. Finding sequences of points or propositions and marking them with numbers in the margin. You should be composing the argument out of the authors most important sentences and proposition.

3. The final step is, find out the solutions or the conclusion the author comes to. Not all problems are solved.  You ought to know where the argument stands , whether he fails to address the problems or did he raise new problems. Is there a solution or is further research required?

First, you can expect a new article late next week. Which will wrap up stage two of the analytical reading process, in the detailed reading series. If you have been keeping up with the articles and doing some of the practice reading comprehension sheets, after this article, you should have enough information to read a book complete and understand it. The next stage will be concerned with suspending judgement where you draw a conclusion. Do not proceed to this step until you have mastered:

Stage 1:Pre-Reading

Stage 2: Detailed Reading

Remember: The more thoroughly you do the previous step the easier the next step will be.

Second, expect major additions, revisons, and updates on all of the articles since the last update.

This is stage 2 of the reading processes. Stage 1 is pre-reading,  stage 2, is the detailed read, stage 3 is the critical read. This first stage you are finding out what the book is about as a whole and its structure, stage two you will learn to find out what the book is saying in detail and suspending judgment and criticizing which will be discussed in stage 3.

The main goal of the art of reading and writing is skilled use of words for the sake of communicating knowledge and experience.

Part 1: Finding the Key Words

Context

This will be the main source  because an author uses most words ordinarily, with a range of meanings and trusts the context to indicate shifts. This means the way the words are used will determine its meaning. The words used will be similar to the way they were used in the authors time. Mark the words that give you trouble. These may sometimes be the ones that are important to the author as well. Above all the words that give you trouble will be most important to you. Once you have a clear understanding of the words the author is using you can determine which ones are the most important and which ones are important in relation to other important words.

Signs

Look out for words that the author puts overt stress on certain words and not others. The authors does this by quotations, italics and various other typographic  devices. He may discuss how it is used or how he will use it, in various senses. He might even define it for you. An important word is one that the author argues with others writers about it.

The set of words that the author uses to express his main ideas, concepts a arguments are most important for him. They are naturally most important for you as a reader. In addition, the words that are not clear are  important for you. All the signs of finding key words will not help you unless you make constant effort to ponder or mark  the words you  do not understand.

Part 2: Finding the Meanings

Now that we have located the parts of the text we need to work on, let’s proceed to finding the meanings. The central idea in this will be that “you have to discover the meaning of a word  you do not understand by using the meanings of all the others words  in the context that you do  understand”

A useful analogy of the process of finding meanings, is of a jig saw puzzle, the more pieces you have already put together will help you figure out the whole and find the remaining parts.

The Process

1. Try to determine whether the word has one or many meanings

2.  If it has many , try to see how are they related

3. Note the places where the word  is used  in any clue to the reason  for the shift meaning.

A Note on Dictionaries

Don’t Try to get  word wise quick by memorizing a long list of words whose meanings are unconnected with any actual experience. The only time you should resort to a dictionary is if youcome across with a technical word or a word that is wholly new to you.

Find the important words and ones that trouble you, identify there shifting meaning , and agree with the author about the words meaning.

1. Yale

By far my favourite because of the  diversity of courses, from engineering to classics. Something that the separates it from other open universities is that it offers video lectures for every course.

2. U C Berkeley

Probably has the widest selection of courses but the downside is the course materials vary for each course. Some courses just have  audio lectures others include slides but you will have to use Google some of the written material.

3.  MIT

Overall an amazing resource because of its  wide selection on the course materials you can find lecture notes, projects and examples, image Galleries, selected lecture notes, online textbooks, assignments and solutions, exams and solutions, multimedia content for various disciplines.

4. Open Culture

This is on the list because it is a good compilation of free education on the internet. It  is not   primary resource but the site offers links to eBooks, YouTube videos, online courses, language courses and  movies. It is a source for what’s new and open on the internet.

E-books

1.  Project Gutenberg

Probably y favourite resource for online eBooks because it is clean and easy to use.  A plus is you can browse through it easily because they only have quality books in any format easily and they do not have spam e-books that are ten pages long. The only downside is if you are not into classics, this site does not have much to offer for that. The only downside is it is a bit hard on the eyes. if you want to get some serious reading done you will have to select passages and print the out so you can write on the or  use a program that lets you add your input. For more information on how to take notes while reading.

2. Scribd

Now this is for the more modern , magazine type. They include graphics  and images, are easy to browse and read through.

Audio

1. Librivox

This is by far the best audio book site I know, most other sites that offer the same service usually link to this site. I have personally used this site over and over again. They have a wide selection some of the older works such as Dante, and Plato to newer and ore contemporary works like Ayn Rand.

2. Learn Out Loud

This is a good  directory because it is comprehensive. It takes a variety of sources and compiles them. Overall a good source, there something for everyone, on there

Review – How to Read a Book

I think it is safe to say if it was not for this book this blog would not have started and I would not be studying the same discipline I am now persuing in formal education.

How to Read a Book (A Touchstone book) is mainly concerned with understanding and make them teach us how to read and live well. It focuses on self education, how to read harder books by yourself with the book as your only teacher. It has a main section which has a few introduction chapters about what the art of reading is, then it jumps into the actually details of how to read difficult books, finally there are some chapters  about how to read specific subjects (math, science etc.). It includes a exhaustive reading list and appendix about 50 pages of exercises of the four levels of reading as organized by Adler. Overall, the chapters on the actual levels are reading are the most helpful, comprehensive, and timeless. The rest of the book is not as useful, I felt that the exercises weren’t an accurate test of my abilities some of them were too easy, others did not have enough information to mark or measure my ability.

Why read the book?

If you have the time and interest I would highly recommend you pick up the book. Read and Re-read the chapter on analytical reading until you can flawlessly practice it. Te rest of the book is not worth the time because the best way to learn once you know how to analytically read is to actually spend 45- minutes to an hour slowly reading through a book and really understanding it. Practice is the best teacher.

Update

Everything you will need to complete pre-reading of the reading process is up and you can find it all here. If you want to practice what you have learned, there are worksheets. If you want to read the articles and want to apply them to what you are reading currently or want to read you can find a  template here.

Pre-Reading template

How to use:  You fill this out once you have completed step one of the process. Before you begin to read a book just take 15 minutes to examine it and fill out this template. Doing this will make understanding the details of the book much easier because you should already have grasp on the whole. This step becomes paramount once you begin to attempt books that challenge you.

Problem: I do not understand the book well enough, after I examine it, to fill out this template  OR The book does not offer enough information to fill the template such as an informative preface or table of contents.

Solution:  Do not worry if you do not find enough information to fill it out to your satisfaction because not all books offer enough info to preview read.  Do not worry if you do not understand the book well enough  to fill out the template either. To solve both of these  problems, simply fill out the sheet to the best of your ability, then start reading the book and keep the template around. Once you have read through the book once, go back and fill out the rest of the template.

Put it all together

Stage 1: Previewing

Step 1: Examine the Book

step 1a: Classify

step 2a: Summarize

step 3a: Outline

Stage 2: Read in Detail

Stage 3: Criticizing

If you have done stage one and two of the pre-reading series this should be quick and easy because the acts of stating the unity should help you innumerate its parts. Now that you have stated the book as a whole now it’s time to show its separate parts.

The author has wrote table of contents to write a good book, you will rewrite and organize in order to read it well. Your outline  might not be as good as his table of contents but after doing so you should have a better understanding of the books structure which, in the long run will help you understand the books parts and details better.

What we are trying to show is the complexity of the book, and the structure of its parts and part’s parts.

Let’s begin:

1. Skim through the table of contents and pay attention to how the book is organized, try to see if it can be organized in a different way. what topics could be clustered together.

2. Organize the main division , topics and sub topics.

3. Innumerate the  points because you should treat the parts as if they were subordinate wholes , each with a unity and complexity of their own.

What it should look like:

1.Main division

a. sub-division

a1. sub-topic

b. sub-division

b1. sub-topic

c. sub-division

c1. sub-topic

2. Main division

a. sub-division

a1. sub-topic

b. sub-division

b1. sub-topic

c. sub-division

c1. sub-topic

How do I know how much detail to go into?

This can be even further organized into the further sub topics covered but you can approximate how far you need to outline it to get a good grasp of its structure. Just remember the harder you work in pre-reading and mastering these step the better off you will be when you start to read the actual book and understand it.

Bonus: For visual learners you can make a mind map. Follow the instructions above on how to outline a book and draw it out in a mind map, starting with the topic in the middle and branching out the various subtopics. Make sure you innumerate the parts so you know its order. You can find more detailed instructions on how to mind map here.

Worksheet: # 1

Your chance to be heard:

How do you organize information?

leave a comment, let me know what you think.

This step of the process, is simpler than you think, especially if you have examined the book and have classified the book . This step is complementary to the next step outline a book. In the sense that stating what the book is about as a whole will help you figure out, what is of major importance and what is minor detail.

This step requires you to, in a short paragraph of a few sentences state the main line of plot for the book or the main argument of an expository book. The information you need to do this step can be found in the preface, title and overall examining the book will help you. If all this fails then summarize the best you can move on to reading the book in detail stage 2  and once you do your first complete read through go back and adjust your summary according to the new  insight you have acquired.

For example:

Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

Seneca writes letters to  friend, Lucilius, who is asking him for his advice. His responses are what make up the letters in this book. His advice is derived from stoic ideas and ethics. They discuss many topics, such as, old age, death, friendship, philosophers,  retirement, etc. His advice follows  “wisdom of the self-possessed person immune to overmastering emotions and life’s setbacks”.

A good author constantly helps you by stating summaries and plans on what is to come in the book. The reason this seems difficult to most is because readers do not pay attention to the front or back matter and people do not take time to even examine a book before they read it. This step can be simple if you pay attention to the authors introductory words. You must state the summery in your own words, that is brief yet comprehensive. You are stating the essence or the unity of the book.

That is all you need, it takes about 5-10 minutes and you can find the template (here).

Your chance to be heard:

Do you summerize, on paper, what you read? Do yo think this step is helpful?

leave a comment, let me know what you think.