Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001)

Of all elements this book has, the most striking one is perhaps its title. A rather simple, descriptive title, yet, ironically, attractive enough to spark curiosity for some, including myself, leading into a question: why should someone read a book about reading a book?

The answer itself reveals that the said title is actually a bit misleading. What the author means by "read" is not its meaning in a general sense, but a specific kind of it, which, if I try to rename the title of this book, it would be: "How to learn something from an expository book (and make sure you really understand it)".

Some readers, who expecting a more general or leisure type of reading, would feel being deceived; but then, such readers are unlikely to have interest in a book titled "How to Read a Book" in the first place. This is a book for those who want to read seriously--readers who often read a book and after which felt that the book itself still have more to say; or those who struggles to understand a certain difficult read.

The book itself is divided into two main parts. In the first part, the author gives a set of general "rules" that the readers have to follow in order to meet the objective of "mastering" the reading skill. The second part goes into explaining different methods of reading specific kind of books, such as science and history.

The general rules itself are separated into 3 levels, in which the author wants the readers to follow in orderly manner. The first part is called "Inspectional Reading", which purpose is to make the readers know what to expect from a book before a "real" reading takes place. Then followed by the next step, called "Analytical Reding". This is where the "real" reading occurs. In this kind of reading, Adler thinks that the readers should treat the process like a discourse with the book's author. The last step is called "Syntopical Reading". Unlike the former two, this type of reading is a special case applied only when the a reader wants to know a certain topic or subject which requires several books to study.

Some people might get overwhelmed by these rules, even say that they are overly unecessary and ended up hating the activity of reading itself. However, Adler emphasized in this book that these rules aren't supposed to be applied to all kinds of books. Some aren't worth youer time and effort to apply all of these rules when reading them. This is a key point which I think should be noted for the readers of this book.

I find in the second part, where Adler categorizes different rules for specific books, are interesting. My favorites are the parts about Philosophy and Science. In each of these sections, He explain what makes certain kind of books requires different kind of reading. He also gave his perspective and little bit of historical contexts about each of these book types, and why these rules will helps us reads the book better. There are also chapter about novels and poetry where Charles van Doren, Adler's co-author takes his seat of giving his expertise.

In the Appendix of the book, the authors gave us a list of books that they thinks are essentials book to read, the books where the special reading skill are worth to be applied to. There are also exercises to test of what we've learned from this book. The test will gave the readers a test to reads, and requires us to apply the rules from this book to answer.

So far, my only critic is the book's writing style that feels outdated and rigid, especially for today's people. However, I think the book itself delivers its objective. Reading difficult books is hard, and sometimes we gave up halfway. So does the skills required to overcome it. Readers who have patience and diligence of following the rules this books taught will, in my opinion, have their time and effort being paid and rewarded in the end.… (meer)