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1-Page Summary of How to Read a Book

Overview

10 The book “Days to Faster Reading” will help you read faster and retain more information. It lists the mindsets that inhibit effective reading, such as negative thinking, and replaces them with highly efficient techniques for reading.

Did you find it difficult to read the assigned texts in school? Probably so. We love reading for pleasure, but when we have to work on books and articles that don’t interest us, we struggle to stay engaged. That doesn’t have to be the case. There is a method of reading even dry texts quickly and efficiently. A cult hit in the 1940s, How To Read A Book can help you get more from your reading whether you need to bone up on a novel for English class or learn about a new marketing text at work.

In this passage, you will learn why you can’t be a passive reader and need to use your active reading skills. You’ll also find out how the table of contents is useful for finding information quickly and that even very intelligent people might need a dictionary if they don’t understand some of the words in a document.

Big Idea #1: To get the most out of books, you need to read actively. You can do this by following some basic rules.

Do you take any moment to read a good book? Sometimes, we don’t need to change our approach when reading for fun. However, there are times when we need to understand and select information quickly from text. Let’s look at some tips and tricks on how to do that best.

First, the basics. Reading is an active process. It’s like a ball game where one party throws the ball and the other party has to make an effort in order to catch it. That is, the “catcher” – or reader – has to make an effort in order to understand what the author, who throws the ball, is trying to convey.

This means that you have to be willing to put in the effort and work hard. If you want to become a better reader, then you must learn how it’s done.

If you want to be a better catcher, you have to know the rules of the game and practice.

So, how do you become a good reader? You master different levels of reading. This includes superficial and more involved readings. The following key points will offer some guidelines on how to achieve this.

Big Idea #2: To understand a book, you need to read it. Before you analyze a book, you have to read it.

When you were a kid, you had to read seemingly meaningless sentences such as “The cat sat on the mat.” While reading them, you learned how to read.

Elementary reading is the stage at which a reader can make sense of what they’re reading. The reader asks, “What does this sentence mean?”

For example, when children first learn to read, they link symbols on a page with sounds in order to form words and sentences. Once they can do that, they can then understand the basic content of those sentences.

In other words, they understand that the letters “c,” “a” and “t” sound like they do in the word “cat,” that this word is connected to others to form the sentence “The cat sat on the mat,” and finally, that this sentence relates to an image of a cat sitting. This all seems glaringly obvious doesn’t it? But if you don’t understand what words are communicating you won’t be able to go beyond its surface meaning or grasp its basic meaning.

For example, imagine reading a book on cats without knowing the word “cat.” It would make no sense. So, when you analyze text, make sure you understand all the basic concepts from the start.

How to Read a Book Book Summary, by Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren