How to Read Analytically

       This work will largely summarize the thoughts of Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book. The primary focus is non-fiction and I will use The Histories and Nicomachean Ethics as examples.

       This work presupposes that the reader has a desire to deeply read and understand books, and that the books read will be of quality material. You ought not speed read a good book and you should not desire to. Analytical reading is a slow process. Ask yourself, “Do I want to be the person that has read 10,000 books or do I want to deeply understand a fraction of them?” If the latter is true, then carry on.

Stage 0: Pre-reading

       Before you engage with a work, you should know what kind of work you will be reading. Pre-reading involves investigating the book before you begin reading. It is a time to intentionally discover what the book is attempting to tell you. What does the title tell you? What about the back cover/inside flap? Read the author's preface. They will often tell you how the book is organized.

       Find the publication date, author’s years, translator (if applicable). Look at the table of contents. Is it divided neatly? For a work of history does it go by leader, decade, moment, century? Or is it a work like Herodotus’ with no rhyme or reason?

       Before you begin reading the book you should be able to classify the work and know what you are getting into. If you are reading The Nicomachean Ethics you should be able to recognize it as a work of philosophy that was written several centuries before Christ, by a greek named Aristotle, and that it is attempting to explain Aristotle’s view on how one ought to behave.

Stage 1: Analytical Reading

       The art of analytical reading is slowly working through a book and analyzing the thoughts therein. As you read through a book, annotate it. Underline important sentences, highlight key words, summarize sections after you have finished them, ask questions, remind yourself where you are confused, mark where you disagree.

Three Tips

Tip 1

       On a blank page of the book (in the front or back) or on a separate notebook create a glossary. The glossary should contain three kinds of words:

As an example, we will use some terms from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics        Why keep a glossary? As you lay out terms that you are unfamiliar with or the author is using uniquely you will notice how often the author relies on specific terms. For example, Aristotle’s entire argument in his Ethics is that virtue is found in the mean of two extremes. Such that the opposite of cowardice is not courage, but recklessness. Courage, therefore, is the mean (or the average) between the two extremes, cowardice and recklessness. If you do not understand what mean is or how Aristotle is using it, then you cannot understand what he is arguing.

Tip 2

       Create your own table of contents. You are free to disagree with the author’s table of contents. This will help you to keep track of all of the different constituent parts of the work. For many older works (such as Aristotle's Ethics and Herodotus Histories the translator of the work will often create their own table of contents as the original authors did not create one themselves. This will also help you when you get to the end of the work and are interpreting what you have read. It is also useful as a reference. If there was a very confusing part of the work or a particularly engaging passage, you can mark it in the table of contents for reference.

Tip 3

       This is purely personal preference. Collect key or impactful sentences. Write them out on a notecard, or in a notebook, or in a file on a computer. This increases my engagement in a work because I am on the hunt for something that I can take away from the book. It is not a cool party trick but these sentences will stick in your head and influence you in the future. Sentences such as,

Stage 2: Summary & Structure

       After you have finished reading a text, summarize it in as few sentences as possible. Preferably one sentence, but no more than a short paragraph.

       “Herodotus reports on the history and cultures of the Persians, Greeks, and surrounding nations; and he shows the causes and course of the Peleponisian war.”

       Having “stated the unity,” as Adler puts it, create a detailed outline following the major parts of the work broken down into smaller, constituent parts.

This is a longer process but it will solidify the work into your mind as you interpret the author's work. The last step of summary and structure is to define what the author’s problems are.

Stage 3: Interpretation

       Just as paragraphs are made of sentences and sentences of words; arguments are made of propositions and propositions are made of terms. In order to interpret an author’s work we must define the key terms the author uses, reconstruct his propositions, and lay out his argument. This is the importance of laying out the structure of the work, so you can follow the author’s thought.

       Having reconstructed the author’s argument, compare the solutions offered to the problems solved. What does the author ask you to take for granted? Did the author solve his problem? Did some problems remain unaddressed?

       At this point the reader should begin to appreciate three things. The first is that carefully reading and engaging with a work as you read will make this process much easier. The second is that these are not necessarily to be performed separately. As you develop your own table of contents, you are structuring the book as you believe it should be laid out. As you add terms to the glossary you are interpreting terms that will be used when reconstructing the argument. The third is that this is a difficult process and will not always be accomplished. You, being mortal, have a limited amount of time to read and if you read this deeply you ought to only read those books which are truly worth your time to dissect.

Stage 3: Conclusion & Criticism

       Criticize a work only if you can say with confidence “I understand what is being said.” If you have given a good faith effort and cannot follow the author’s argument, that may be its own criticism. Be open with the biases that you bring to the table, but attempt impartiality.

       “I love C.S. Lewis’ writing and I am a Christian, that will color my interpretation of The Abolition of Man.”

       Bringing all of your thoughts together, answer these questions: “is this book true? What of it?” Upon interpreting a work you have six primary reactions to it.

       If you follow all of the steps above you will walk away with a depth of understanding of a work that is of surpassing quality. You will have more than just read the work, you will have understood it, and you will take the ideas of the book into your life. Good luck out there, and read well.