I Learned How To Read
Really? How To Read a Book? You’d think by the time someone was in the process of acquiring their terminal degree they would have already figured out how to read. Of course, this book title will only be surpassed in irony by our future reading requirement, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.
I went into this book with an eye-roll and an “Ok… let’s just get through this” in my spirit. And although much of this book was rather un-relatable because of how it was tied to specific ways to read a specific type of book (history, science, fiction, non-fiction, autobiography, philosophy, etc.) there was one transcending principle, of reading as more than just gathering information has become incredibly valuable to me. Adler writes, “To be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.”[1]
One of the best things this book did for me, was to liberate me from the mindset of needing to read every word of a book. Skimming books and jumping on SparkNotes is a lazy highschoolers habit as old as the first book report ever assigned. But How to Read a Book, takes this concept outside the mindset of being lazy and transforms it into being intentional. The challenge is, “what exactly are you trying to get out of this book, go in and hunt for it and get out as quickly as possible.”
To illustrate this for those who might still think this method is cheating or lazy, consider this silly example of the difference between how my wife and I shop when we go to the mall. I walk in with a mission, “I need some new flip flops.” So, I head right to the “Flip Flop Shop” pick out the most stylish/comfortable pair that is on clearance, and whamo, I’m out before traffic backs up. My wife, on the other hand, might go into the mall for that same one item, but will hit every store on the way so she can see it all, just in case there is some deal or new trend that she might miss out on. (After all our time at the Capetown waterfront, many of you can attest that my wife enjoys the “wandering-shopping” method.) This might be the stereotypical gender difference between the hunter/gatherer mindset of men and women. I use this illustration to show how I used to read books before. I gathered it all in, I wanted every word, I wandered on every page just in case there was something that might be of value. How to read a book, transforms the lollygagger reader, into a ruthless hunter of knowledge (and therefore a saver of time). This concept really tied together well with Dr. Jason Clark’s comment on our second Skype session where he told us not think that just because someone has written a book and it’s published in front of you, means that they are smarter than you. This was very liberating.
To further this point, Adler uses a quote from Pascal, “When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.”[2] This is true, and is important to remember as we are being launched into a program where we the literary gauntlet has been thrown down, challenging us to spend less and less time reading our texts word for word. This challenge that our lead mentor has given us is exciting, but could easily be abused as we simply scan the book for enough information to write an essay, or use the Kindle owned Good Reads web service to simply find the most highlighted quotes of a book and call it good. But on the other side of Pascal’s quote, to the one who reads too slow, soaking in each word of the text, does not engage in critical thinking as they are reading. All of the sudden this studying for a terminal degree becomes busy work and our minds are not stretched like they should be. I’m reminded of a quote from Albert Einstein, “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”[3]
Cumulatively, this concept from Einstein, the principle from Adler, and the challenge from our lead mentor intends for us to recalculate our distribution of “raw data input” and “energy spent processing”. It seems like the purpose of being assigned this book by our mentors has been to stretch us out of our lazy habits of thinking. We are being ripped out of the undergrad and graduate patterns of “read this and now tell me what you read” and launched into the realm “now tell me something now.” Or perhaps, at least, tell me how to apply it in a new way.
Works Cited
Adler, Mortimer J., and Van Doren Charles Lincoln. How to Read a Book. Touchstone Book, 2014.
Einstein, Albert. “Albert Einstein Quotes.” BrainyQuote. Accessed October 06, 2017. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133807.html.
[1] Mortimer J. Adler and Van Doren Charles Lincoln, How to Read a Book(Touchstone Book, 2014), loc. 103.
[2] Mortimer J. Adler and Van Doren Charles Lincoln, How to Read a Book(Touchstone Book, 2014), loc. 272.
[3] Albert Einstein, “Albert Einstein Quotes,” BrainyQuote, accessed October 06, 2017, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133807.html.
8 responses to “I Learned How To Read”
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Kyle!
Thanks for this reflection, and especially the analogy of going to the mall. Spot on. I resonate with what you wrote about wanting to read every word and to see any other approach as kind of like high school style slacking. But, the book (along with Jason’s presentation during the advance) is pretty persuasive. See you soon.
Hi Kyle!
I really appreciate your quote, “One of the best things this book did for me, was to liberate me from the mindset of needing to read every word of the book.” I thought the same thing, and in fact, I already enjoy reading more since we don’t have to spend so much time on the mundane and unnecessary.
I hope your kids had a blast with their grandparents.
Jay
Hi Kyle!
Hope the move went well this week!
One thing I learned about you during the trip is that you are an AVID reader. I wonder if the idea of “get in/get out” challenges your core values, and if you will be able to adopt this strategy? For me, it’s a necessity because I don’t have enough time in my day to get it all done. How about you?
Like Jean, I remember you saying you essentially a book a week. I was curious to hear in your post how this would be transformed by Adler. I have the same struggle with wanting to get everything out of the book but then an inability to recall it all or even, at times, the important points. I am wondering if you are intending to read in different modes now or if you will just read more with your ‘Flip Flop Shop’ method of hunting. What other books are you reading besides the ones for our program? Anything just for fun?
Yes I totally resonate with the concept of hunting for what you need and getting out, and yes I totally confer that your wife is very much the opposite and likes to wander endlessly to her heart’s content (pretty much in the professional shopper category 🙂 The moral of the story…when reading a book be like Kyle, get what you need from the book and get out. Miss you and your wife already, you guys were a blast to hang out with!
Kyle,
I loved your statement,”transforms the lollygagger reader, into a ruthless hunter of knowledge”. I have always, like you, poured over my books and it always seemed like such a chore, but I think I will be a better critical reader if I can just do what I am told…That is the hard part I guess. Shutting down the voice in my head that shouts you did not finish every part of that book.
Great thoughts Kyle. I couldn’t help but think of Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society” describing the tempo of poetry in a John Wayne accent as you recapped Paschal; the simple enjoyment of reading poetry to the intrinsic value of truly comprehending its construction. For myself, nothing quite beats Shel Silverstein or Dr. Suess when it comes to just reading for the fun of it. I’m not sure if its sad or not, but sometimes when we get to this level of education, I cannot help but wonder if reading for the fun of it has simply taken a vacation for the next few years; I hope not.
To be honest, I think I have found a certain joy already in just reading the different blog posts, because this not only brings to light points of the reading that I may have read over too quickly, too slowly, or…hmmm…may not have read at all, but it also gives me a view of my classmates viewpoints as they compare to my own. That reading is enlightening if I take the time to really see what is being said. Thanks for the post.
Kyle, I laughed at the, “I went into this book with an eye-roll and an “Ok… let’s just get through this”…I have to admit that I did the same. I was pleased that after wading through the how to sections in the first few chapters, I walked away with being liberated in how I use a book and how it is set to help my research rather than being conformed to what the author necessary wanted it to be.
Loved the shopping analogy, we have all been there whether we are the every story person or the let’s get in and out person. Thanks Kyle.