“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”
― Mortimer J. Adler
Reading a book is too slow to be worthwhile, and too fast will damage satisfaction and understanding. So how exactly should we read?
"How to Read a Book" provides some guidance.
There are generally three purposes for reading:
Entertainment
Acquiring information
Pursue comprehension
This book is mainly read for the third purpose of "pursuing comprehension," and provides some specific solutions.
First, you can bring four questions before reading a book:
What is this book about?
What are the author's thoughts, statements, and arguments?
Does this book make sense? All of it or part of it?
What's the relevance of this book to me?
Then, understand that reading comprehension is divided into 4 levels:
1. Elementary Reading
How to recognize individual words on a page, mainly targeting children beginning to learn how to read or adults reading unfamiliar foreign characters.
Understand the meaning of the sentence "The cat sits on the hat."
For example, my English vocabulary is limited, so for me, the efficiency of reading English books is very low, and I can basically only maintain a basic reading level. Therefore, I usually consume English content only when I am entertained or looking at news; other content that requires deeper comprehension still needs to be read in Chinese books to improve reading efficiency.
2. Inspection Reading
is systematic skimming, observing the book superficially, divided into 2 steps:
Skimming or rough reading - understand the structure
Superficial reading - understanding the content
3. Analytical reading
Comprehensive and complete reading, divided into 9 steps:
Classifying the type and subject of the book
Expressing the theme in short sentences
List the outline
Identify the problem the author aims to solve
Find the key terms and reach a consensus
Grasp the main idea
Identify the arguments, restructure the cause and effect of the arguments, and understand the author's claims
Identify the resolved and unresolved issues; and among the unresolved issues, determine which ones are problems that the author themselves cannot resolve.
Review books as if communicating knowledge.
4. Thematic Reading
Systematic reading involves reading many books, listing the relevant points within them, and proposing the theme of the series of books being read. Thematic reading seeks "dialectical objectivity," so it must be comprehensive and should not presuppose a position. It is divided into six steps.
Find relevant books.
Read the books and find the most relevant chapters
Create neutral terms based on the theme so that most books can be interpreted using this set of terms
Establish a neutral main idea, list a series of questions, and examine the answers provided by different books regarding these questions
Define major and minor issues, and identify the book's viewpoints on these issues
Analyze the aforementioned discussions, organize the questions and issues in order, and highlight the theme
The above is the method of reading with the goal of "pursuing comprehension," and this pursuit of understanding is mainly for the growth of life and mind. The most distinct difference between humans and other animals lies in the continuous development of the mind. However, like muscles, the mind will atrophy if it is not used.
Especially now, with various forms of entertainment and information surrounding us, we feel like we are using our brains because we need to respond to external stimuli. But the power of these external stimuli is very limited. Similar to drugs, once we get accustomed to them, we require larger amounts.
If there is no inner vitality, intelligence, quality, and spirit will cease to grow.