Book Outline
With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material.
Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text.
Also included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works.
Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests you can use measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension, and speed.
Review
This book is really good for beginner readers (like me). I have not read much before and this book has given me, I think, an import insight on how to better read different kinds of books.
I used to read pretty much every book with the same speed and with the same amount of analytical effort. Now, I think I will have a much better sense of each book that I reading, as I will attempt to adjust my speed accordingly, depending on the type of book that I am reading.
As a non English native speaker, I used take a lot of time to translate each word that I did not understand in a book, which was leading to a slightly worse understanding of a book as a whole and I was missing details, because I was distracting myself, too much with translating unknown words, instead of following the story line (especially with fiction novel). Now I will try to mark most words that I do not understand, to later on translate after I have completed a whole chapter.
I think everyone that is aspiring to be a good reader, should read this book, as it touches some very import points in how to better challenge your brain and therefore become better at analyzing and reading between the lines of a book.
By MZ
BOOKS MORE, FACEBOOK LESS!! 