I have started this new blog to just share my feelings on any topic - Yoga , Spirituality , Politics , Science , Technology , Culture ,Food etc etc that I feel interested in sharing . In this blog post I would like to share my views on Reading of Books .
Everyone reads books and we are also encouraged to read books right from a young age but do we really know ¨How to read a Book¨? Unfortunately No . We associate reading to just being able to read the printed matter and get some news / information from the same .
I have been a great reader of books myself and took pride in reading various books but only after coming across the book ¨How To Read A Book - The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading "by Mortimer J Adler & Charles Van Doren , that I understood how much I did not know about reading books . We have been taught in schools just to read the printed texts but never have been taught how to read a book . The author says that all books should not be read the same way and the speed with which we read books depends upon the quality and content of the books . The method we employ for reading a Novel must not be the same for the method we employ for reading a Science Text book , History , Philosophy book . We have to adopt a different reading methodology for each and every book and not have a uniform way of reading all of them .
This book describes four levels of reading a book - Elementary Reading , Inspectional reading , Analytical Reading ,Syntoptical Reading .
Most of us read books ( i.e non fictional ones ) only at the Elementary level , some serious readers go to the next level i.e Inspectional reading but very few people go to the next 2 levels i.e Analytical and Syntoptical reading and that is usually done by Professional Readers / People doing Research . If we have to really get the best out of any book especially written by a great author who is an authority in his/her field then we have to move first from Elementary /Inspectional level to Analytical level and then to Syntoptical level .
For people who consider reading as their hobby especially reading Non fictional books then they must get the book ¨How to read a book "and read it thoroughly first and learn the techniques of how to read a book with great depth and get the full benefit of reading a book .
We can read hundreds of books but what matters is how much have we understood and digested the contents in those books . This book ¨How to read a book¨ helps us to move from just plain reading of books to understanding a book in depth .
We can read hundreds of books but what matters is how much have we understood and digested the contents in those books . This book ¨How to read a book¨ helps us to move from just plain reading of books to understanding a book in depth .
I would have been happy had I been exposed to this book in my school days itself but I am happy that I got hold of this book at least later and I am now using this book to re-orient my own reading methods .
