Book Review: “How to Read a Book”
2020-01-09 in book review
I don’t really review the books I read, but I decided to write a short blurb about the oft-recommended “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading” by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. I’ve originally posted it on Goodreads, but I’m publishing it here, too, for good measure:
There’s a lot to not like about this book: the slightly hermetic style, the occasional sexist slur, the subtly condescending tone, its exclusive–and, grantedly, somewhat apologetic–orientation to the “Western” literary canon, and the fact that the “recommended reading list” includes a single non-male author.
Keeping in mind that it was written in the 1940s, and despite these non-negligible shortcomings, I still find the book thoroughly insightful and valuable for what it is: a manual for analytical and comparative reading of “difficult” books, for whatever definition of “difficult” the reader might choose. It’s a deeply practical book, sometimes to a fault, and many of its takeaways might seem obvious. Yet, when outlined in a systematic and formal way, with plenty of examples and illustrations, I believe they give a good framework for approaching demanding literature.
Most importantly, the book forces you to think critically about the act of reading, and this might be its greatest contribution of all: it has certainly made me think about the way I approach books, and it has given me a few new tools to do so.