To This there is no end.
As I reflect on how far I have come as a person, the one factor that has been key to my growth in different aspects of life, has been reading. I recognize like the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes 12:12 that to the making of books there is no end, which encourages more reading and writing of books and more of which will add to knowledge and growth of the mind.
My offices both at the workplace and at my house have one thing in common, there are several shelves that are full of books that I have bought and read over the years. My appetite for books is so high that I could be accused of instinct buying of books because I am so apt at buying any good book that catches my attention. So when it comes to reading books, I am sure that I rank somewhere among readers but I also listen on radio, television and recorded messages from many speakers. I am also good at browsing and reading from the internet and other sources of reading materials.
While I have made all these accomplishments, I realize the great unrecognized need that I had of understanding how to read books. I’m now excited about the next book on line to read because now I’m better at reading by reading Adler’s book, “How to read a book”. It was easy to understand the level of reading that I often operate at in reading the books and how much knowledge that I have missed out from the books that I read. I have done more of the inspectional reading and little of the analytical reading but not the syntopical reading. It has become a habit for me to read the preface of the book and the publisher’s blurb, and then to jump straight to chapter one without paying attention to the contents and the index. I have rarely approached reading by first skimming through the book and doing the superficial reading, I read the books once and add them to my list of books. While I’m thorough in reading through the chapters and make some sketchy notes as I read, i realize that I have been driven more by my desire to and superficial knowledge and vocabularies than being a keen reader. I’m thoroughly disappointed that Adler’s book is not widely used, I should have read this book at my undergraduate level but or even at high school but now I’m glad that I’m a better reader. I believe it will be much easier to read books and get more information from the books and this has greatly increased my appetite for reading.
The ultimate aim of reading is to increase your knowledge in the subject of your study or interest, which will grow your mind. It is so clear from that having the reading skills is critical to successful accomplishment of the task of reading and acquiring the relevant knowledge that helps to grow your mind. Knowing how to read as you seek to read on the relevant subject, you have to identify the books that are good in that subject out of the bibliography of books that you identify. Through inspection reading and superficial reading one is able to determine the books that relevant to the subject of interest, and you can eliminate the books that are not useful from the bibliography. Analytical reading helps you identify the relevant paragraphs that talk about the subject of interest and helps you reduce the time taken to read each book and ensures that you’re able to read as many books as possible. It is the inspectional and analytical reading that helps us determine the books to read syntopically and to extract the relevant knowledge and information effectively and within a reasonable time.
It is important to read books that stretch you if we are to add to our reading skills rather than reading books that amuse or entertain. I believe that this is the task ahead of us in our studies and practice of the same knowledge in the stations that God has put us to serve Him, to grow our minds and be better at fulfilling our obligations in kingdom building. It is good to realize that as we grow in our minds and we increase our reading skills that we shall find some books that we read before irrelevant because we will have grown beyond them, but there will also be books that will still seem to be higher. As we reread these higher books, they will still add more knowledge and thus the necessity to read such books multiple times and seek read others. Being that there is no end to addition of books, I feel better equipped to realizing my dream of authoring a book or multiple books.
About the Author
Wallace Kamau
Wallace is a believer in Christ, Married to Mary Kamau (Founder and Executive Director of Missions of Hope International) and father to 3 Wonderful children, Imani Kamau (Graduate student at London School of Economics, UK), Victory Kamau (Undergraduate student at Portland state University, Oregon, USA) and David Kamau ( Grade student at Rosslyn Academy). Founder and Director, Missions of Hope International (www.mohiafrica.org), CPA, BAchelor of Commerce (Accounting) from University of Nairobi, Masters of Arts (Leadership) from Pan African Christian University.9 responses to “To This there is no end.”
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Thank you, Wallace. I too am a bit of an “instinct” buyer of books. The number of books in my Kindle and that line my shelves reflects my avid reading habit yet through this book I have been made painfully aware that I have much to learn to be truly skillful as a reader. I am looking forward to the practice.
What you said about inspectional reading giving us the tools to ascertain whether or not a book will help us in our topic reminded me of a regret I had in my K-12 experience. Like I said in my original post, I didn’t enjoy reading and learning because the system of education I grew up in was nothing more than memorizing things to put on the test. I still remember my teachers spending 90% of the classroom time just writing things on the board for us to write it on our notebooks so that at the end of the term we could write the same thing on the test from memory.
As a result of this bad experience I never saw the point in education and missed out on the richness and wealth of knowledge contained in some of the assigned reading. C.S. Lewis, Shakespeare, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, etc. were some of the classics I chose to ignore, thinking Cliff Notes would help me learn the content. Boy, was I so wrong.
It wasn’t until after near the end of my college experience did I start appreciating books and what they can offer. Just like you, at some point I started collecting books as some kind of hobby. And because I wanted to know what the book was about, combined with impatience, I accidentally learned the skill of scanning books for that information. I guess it’s never too late to acquire certain skills, especially when it’ll help get me though a doctoral program.
Wallace,
It strikes me that this required text helps us to see books as more than sources. That is, they progressively become part of the network we are developing around our determined area of passion and research. Some books are helpful and some are not. By this I mean, some are well constructed and well researched with robust bibliographies. Others are perhaps less authoritative and more personal opinion. I am learning that “good” books should include arguments that I disagree with. Thanks for your thoughts, H
Throw me into the group of reading just to increase knowledge and not to engage with the author.
I loved reading this book because it challenged me to read as if I am communicating with someone. It brought me into an active relationship and not a passive one. Before reading Adler and Doren the only book I read through the lens of a relationship was the Bible. While I still see the Bible as a living book, I can now also read common books but engage with the living author of that book.
Like many of us, I’m sure, I am also right in the middle of the “having-too-many-books” camp! My friends and family know this about me, and often come to me with needs for sources and ideas. I usually tell them things like, “I’ve never actually read/finished this book, but I own it and I’m pretty sure it’s about ____”. With this book, I feel like I can accurately recommend books to colleagues now, because I have the power to actively read them.
I join you in recognizing that another place that we do a lot of reading is online. As Adler wrote his book prior to the internet, how do you think his book would apply to online sources? He talks about being in dialogue with the author, and isn’t that precisely what has been happening with online writing? Not only do we often have biographical information about authors, we can now often ‘follow’ them and gain insight on their everyday life, even ask them about their texts. Do you think we are moving toward what Adler is recommending, or do you think we ought to be remaining only in dialogue with the author as they were when they wrote the piece? That is, should we be engaging with the person who wrote the piece or in dialogue with the author as they were at the time of writing?
Thank you Jenn, that indeed is a great question about dialogue with the author. First with the internet and the opportunity to dialogue online, it’s becoming increasingly easier to access more books than before, especially on kindle and even access them as audiobooks. We can also write on blogs and on websites and interact more with the author by following them on social media, leave comments online and get their response. This enhances dialogue with the author.
On your question whether we are moving what Adler is recommending, I will answer to the affirmative but still insist that at the point of reading the text, you’ve to dialogue with the author at the time of Writing the book in order to ‘catch’ the message in what Adler calls active reading. The online access to the author enhances this active reading in that we can ‘follow’ him/her and ask him for clarification or comment on his text. In essence therefore we’ve to dialogue with the author as he wrote the piece but now we also have the opportunity to dialogue with the person which gives you the opportunity get more clarification or even gives suggestions for enhancing the book.
I agree that this should be required reading at a much earlier stage in our education journeys. This book will be foundational to our journey ahead but I sure wish I had developed more of these skills earlier in life. My house and office are overflowing with books and yet I wish I had this information in order to have gained more from all those years of reading. I am grateful for the new insights and what that will mean for my reading the rest of my life. Thank you for your post!
My wife, who reads a lot of fiction and not a lot of non-fiction, has a rule that if by the end of the first chapter the author hasn’t hooked her she stops reading the book. For a while I thought this was pretty harsh – maybe the hook is in the second or third chapter and you just have to tough it out. Later she explained that it was about time for her. She wants to spend her time reading books that are engaging for her and not hoping against hope that the book will become good. I think that as doctoral students we need to be able to approach our books in a similar way. This is one of the reasons I appreciate that you talk about getting a sense of a book and whether it will be helpful. Thinning the books out that won’t be helpful is a great way to save time along the way, which also gives us more time to focus on the books that will be helpful.