Read How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading Online
Authors: Charles van Doren
But this great advantage that man possesses carries with it a great peril. The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. Atrophy of the mental muscles is the penalty that we pay for not taking mental exercise. And this is a terrible penalty, for there is evidence that atrophy of the mind is a mortal disease. There seems to be no other explanation for the fact that so many busy people die so soon after retirement. They were kept alive by the demands of their work upon their minds; they were propped up artificially, as it were, by external forces. But as soon as those demands cease, having no resources within themselves in the way of mental activity, they cease thinking altogether, and expire.
Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from outside.
But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually.
And when we cease to grow, we begin to die.
Reading well, which means reading actively, is thus not only a good in itself, nor is it merely a means to advancement in our work or career. It also serves to keep our minds alive and growing.
A RECOMMENDED READING LIST
On the following pages appears a list of books that it would be worth your while to read. We mean the phrase "worth your while" quite seriously. Although not all of the books listed are "great" in any of the commonly accepted meanings of the term, all of them will reward you for the effort you make to read them. All of these books are over most people's heads-sufficiently so, at any rate, to force most readers to stretch their minds to understand and appreciate them.
And that, of course, is the kind of book you should seek out if you want to improve your reading skills, and at the same time discover the best that has been thought and said in our literary tradition.
Some of the books are great in the special sense of the term that we employed in the last chapter. On returning to them, you will always find something new, often many things.
They are endlessly re-readable. Another way to say this is that some of the books-we will not say exactly how many, nor will we try to identify them, since to some extent this is an individual judgment-are over the heads of all readers, no matter how skillful. As we observed in the last chapter, these are the works that everyone should make a special effort to seek out. They are the truly great books; they are the books that anyone should choose to take with him to his own desert island.
The list is long, and it may seem a little overwhelming.
We urge you not to allow yourself to be abashed by it. In the first place, you are likely to recognize the names of most of the authors. There is nothing here that is so recondite as to be esoteric. More important, we want to remind you that it is wise to begin with those books that interest you most, for whatever reason. As we have pointed out several times, the primary aim is to read well, not widely. You should not be disappointed if you read no more than a handful of the books in a year. The list is not something to be gotten through in any amount of time. It is not a challenge that you can meet only by finishing every item on it. Instead, it is an invitation that you can accept graciously by beginning wherever you feel at home.
The authors are listed chronologically, according to the known or supposed date of their birth. When several works of an author are listed, these too are arranged chronologically, where that is possible. Scholars do not always agree about the first publication of a book, but this need not concern you. The point to remember is that the list as a whole moves forward through time. That does not necessarily mean that you should read it chronologically, of course. You might even start with the end of the list and read backward to Homer and the Old Testament.
We have not listed all the works of every author. We have usually cited only the more important titles, selecting them, in the case of expository books, to show the diversity of an author's contribution to different fields of learning. In some instances, we have listed an author's Works and specified, in brackets, those titles that are especially important or useful.
In drawing up a list of this kind, the greatest difficulty always arises with respect to the relatively contemporary items. The closer an author is to our own time, the harder it is to exercise a detached judgment about him. It is all very well to say that time will tell, but we may not want to wait.
Thus, with regard to the more recent writers and books, there is much room for differences of opinion, and we would not claim for the later items on our list the degree of authority that we can claim for the earlier ones.
There may be differences of opinion about some of the earlier items too, and we may be charged with being prejudiced against some authors that we have not listed at all. We are willing to admit that this may be true, in some cases. This is our list, and it may differ in some respects from lists drawn up by others. But it will not differ very significantly if everyone concurs seriously in the aim of making up a reading program that is worth spending a lifetime on. Ultimately, of course, you should make up your own list, and then go to work on it. It is wise, however, to read a fair number of the books that have been unanimously acclaimed before you branch off on your own. This list is a place to begin.
We want to mention one omission that may strike some readers as unfortunate. The list contains only Western authors and books; there are no Chinese, Japanese, or Indian works.
There are several reasons for this. One is that we are not particularly knowledgeable outside of the Western literary tradition, and our recommendations would carry little weight.
Another is that there is in the East no single tradition, as there is in the West, and we would have to be learned in all Eastern traditions in order to do the job well. There are very few scholars who have this kind of acquaintance with all the works of the East. Third, there is something to be said for knowing your own tradition before trying to understand that of other parts of the world. Many persons who today attempt to read such books as the I Ching or the Bhagavad-Gita are baffled, not only because of the inherent difficulty of such works, but also because they have not learned to read well by practicing on the more accessible works-more accessible to them-of their own culture. And finally, the list is long enough as it is.
One other omission requires comment. The list, being one of books, includes the names of few persons known primarily as lyric poets. Some of the writers on the list wrote lyric poems, of course, but they are best known for other, longer works.
This fact is not to be taken as reflecting a prejudice on our part against lyric poetry. But we would recommend starting with a good anthology of poetry rather than with the collected works of a single author. Palgrave's The Golden Treasury and The Oxford Book of English Verse are excellent places to start. These older anthologies should be supplemented by more modern ones-for example, Selden Rodman's One Hundred modern Poems, a collection widely available in paperback that extends the notion of a lyric poem in interesting ways. Since reading lyric poetry requires special skill, we would also recommend any of several available handbooks on the subject-for example, Mark Van Doren's Introduction to Poetry, an anthology that also contains short discussions of how to read many famous lyrics.
We have listed the books by author and title, but we have not attempted to indicate a publisher or a particular edition. Almost every work on the list is available in some form, and many are available in several editions, both paperback and hard cover. However, we have indicated which authors and titles are included in two sets that we ourselves have edited. Titles included in Great Books of the Western World are identified by a single asterisk; authors represented in Gateway to the Great Books are identified by a double asterisk.
The List:
The list is available only in the pdf version.
Table of Contents
PART ONE: The Dimensions of Reading
1.THE ACTIVITY AND ART OF READING
Active Reading
Reading as learning: The difference between learning by Instruction and learning by Discovery
Present and Absent Teachers
2. THE LEVELS OF READING
3. THE FIRST LEVEL OF READING: ELEMENTARY READING
Stages of Learning to Read
Stages and Levels
Higher Levels of Reading and Higher Education
Reading and the Democratic Ideal of Education
4. THE SECOND LEVEL OF READING : INSPECTIONAL READING
lnspectional Reading I : Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading
lnspectional Reading I I : Superficial Reading
On Reading Speeds
Fixations and Regressions
The Problem of Comprehension
Summary of lnspectional Reading
5. HOW TO BE A DEMANDING READER
The Essence of Active Reading: The Four Basic Questions a Reader Asks
The Three Kinds of Note-making
Forming the Habit of Reading
From Many Rules to One Habit
PART TWO: The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading
6. PIGEONHOLING A BOOK
The Importance of Classifying Books
What You Can Learn from the Title of a Book
Practical vs. Theoretical Books
Kinds of Theoretical Books
7. X-RAYING A BOOK
Of Plots and Plans: Stating the Unity of a Book
Mastering the Multiplicity: The Art of Outlining a Book
The Reciprocal Arts of Reading and Writing
Discovering the Author's Intentions
The First Stage of Analytical Reading
8. COMING TO TERMS WITH AN AUTHOR
Words vs. Terms
Finding the Key Words
Technical Words and Special Vocabularies
Finding the Meanings
9. DETERMINING AN AUTHOR'S MESSAGE
Sentences vs. Propositions
Finding the Key Sentences
Finding the Propositions
Finding the Arguments
Finding the Solutions
The Second Stage of Analytical Reading
10. CRITICIZING A BOOK FAIRLY
Teachability as a Virtue
The Role of Rhetoric
The Importance of Suspending Judgment
The Importance of Avoiding Contentiousness
On the Resolution of Disagreements
11. AGREEING OR DISAGREEING WITH AN AUTHOR
Prejudice and Judgment
Judging the Author's Soundness