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How to Read a Book – a Review

by Lindsey Hurd

Texas Home School Coalition REVIEW © August 2002

After reading the title, you may be wondering if this book is a new phonics curriculum or a remedial program for juvenile delinquents.  The answer is “no” to both.   With scarcely a mention of phonics, How to Read a Book, by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, certainly transcends elementary skills.   As the authors write, it is a “book for readers, and those who wish to become readers.  .  .   Even more particularly, it is for those whose main purpose in reading books is to gain increased understanding.”  The key word is “understanding.”

Ideas can be understood, and ideas can be known, but the two are vastly different.  Understanding necessitates that we can intellectually know and have the ability to verbally explain the biology of something while the latter begs only that we rattle off a list of disjointed facts much like a parrot.   Of course, it is generally recognized that few desire to live a life of “parrotry,” and probably far fewer among home schoolers.   My mother has always said that if her home schooling yields no other fruit, she hopes it will equip her children for a life of self-teaching.   This is the goal of almost every home schooling mother and ultimately the goal of home schooling itself.   This, too, is the goal of Adler and Van Doren’s How to Read a Book.    

If you began home schooling at kindergarten, reading was the first hurdle to be jumped.   Perhaps you are even now wondering how you are ever going to get your second-grader past his almost cultish addiction to Amelia Bedelia and Green Eggs and Ham or assure your reluctant Junior that dabbling in Shakespeare will indeed prove beneficial for future SAT scores.  The point of all this is that even when the phonics books have been collecting dust bunnies for years, there is still work to be done and progress to be made.   For the writers of How to Read a Book, elementary reading is just the beginning.   Adler and Van Doren detail several different levels of reading, the mastery of which is designed for anyone with the invaluable skill of “active reading.”  They explain how to become a demanding reader by presenting the methods of Inspectional reading, Analytical reading, and Syntopical reading and provide potentially helpful tips for the reading of different genres.  These methods are designed to give the reader the tools for becoming an active reader – rules which can be utilized by anyone at any stage of life. 

Having written a book covering guidelines and suggestions for becoming a better reader, Adler and Van Doren summarize by revealing what they believe to be the primary importance of reading.   As it turns out, it is not so you can impress your friends by reading every single book on the New York Times’ best sellers list, or because you have nothing better to do, or because it is a nice goal.   It is to keep the mind healthy and growing.   They caution, as does Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, that modern media and entertainment, though very helpful and convenient, like to do our thinking for us.   “Television, radio, and all sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are artificial props."  It is like Campbell soup – just add water and voila!  This is not what the human mind needs.  The brain is like a muscle – if  used occasionally or only sometimes, it will not grow; if not at all except in response to outside stimuli provided by the daily news, there will be nothing there when the stimuli fails to stimulate.   Without active reading, the writers assert, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually.   The book closes with this statement: “Reading well, which means reading actively, is thus not only 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."

From a Christian perspective, life-long cultivation of the mind is certainly not the ultimate educational and life goal.   There are many other duties that demand our devotion as well – the greatest of all being our devotion to God and the calling that he has placed upon our lives.   With knowledge and education (and everything else), it is important to remember that our starting point must be God.   Knowledge that begins in man “puffeth up” (1 Cor.  8:1); it becomes lifeless vanity and mere prating before God.  It is a beautiful irony that true knowledge must begin with true humility.   This humility requires that we humble ourselves before God, admitting that we are dependent on him in all things and acknowledging that in Him is found “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col.  2:3).   Proverbs 9:10 assures us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding,” and we are commanded to search after wisdom and knowledge “more than fine gold” (Prov.  16:16).   Thus, it is through these things that we come to better know and serve God. 

As Christians, we are called to evangelize to the world.   Like Paul, we must each prepare for the task by having the ability to defend the hope and by thoughtfully understanding the world of thought around us.   The classics, referred to by Adler and Van Doren as the “great conversation” of history, offer us the opportunity to understand and engage the world in our own home.   These books are not useless, out of style, or worn out; rather, these books are classic because they attempt to address the primary and fundamental questions which have always faced mankind.   As Christians, we are the only ones who have the real answers the world seeks. 

Through the discipline of reading great books in the light of God’s Word, our minds are stretched to further shores of learning.   There is beauty in this journey, for the greater the distance traversed, the more oceans we see stretched before us and the greater appreciation we come to have for infinite knowledge and truth of God.   Sir Isaac Newton once said, “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

“Get wisdom! Get understanding!” – Proverbs 4:5

Lindsey Hurd is a homeschool graduate from Weatherford and the oldest of eleven children.  She continues to pursue her interest in great books and philosophy. More creatively, she enjoys music, cooking, and the exalted position of big sister. 

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