如何阅读一本书

规则一，你一定要知道自己在读的是哪一类书，而且越早知道越好。最好在你开始阅读之前就先知道。

规则二，使用一个单一的句子，或最多几句话（一小段文字）来叙述整本书的内容。

规则三，将书中重要篇章列举出来，说明它们如何按照顺序组成一个整体的架构。

一本书出现在你的面前时，肌肉包着骨头，衣服裹着肌肉，可以说是盛装而来。

（一）三部分：基础阅读-检视阅读-分析阅读-主题阅读_主要规则

*****基础阅读

You must be able to read an author’s text more or less steadily, without having to stop to look up the meaning of many words, and without stumbling over the grammar and syntax. You must be able to make sense of a majority of the sentences and paragraphs, although not necessarily the best sense of all of them.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 31). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

*****检视阅读

****Inspectional Reading I: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading

1. LOOK AT THE TITLE PAGE AND, IF THE BOOK HAS ONE, AT ITS PREFACE.

2. STUDY THE TABLE OF CONTENTS to obtain a general sense of the book’s structure; use it as you would a road map before taking a trip.

3. CHECK THE INDEX if the book has one— most expository works do.

4. If the book is a new one with a dust jacket, READ THE PUBLISHER’S BLURB.

5. From your general and still rather vague knowledge of the book’s contents, LOOK NOW AT THE CHAPTERS THAT SEEM TO BE PIVOTAL TO ITS ARGUMENT. If these chapters have summary statements in their opening or closing pages, as they often do, read these statements carefully.

6. Finally, TURN THE PAGES, DIPPING IN HERE AND THERE, READING A PARAGRAPH OR TWO, SOMETIMES SEVERAL PAGES IN SEQUENCE, NEVER MORE THAN THAT.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 35). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

****Inspectional Reading II: Superficial Reading

That rule is simply this: In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 36). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

*****分析阅读

I. THE FIRST STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR FINDING WHAT A BOOK IS ABOUT 1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. 3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. 4. Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve.

II. THE SECOND STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR INTERPRETING A BOOK’S CONTENTS 5. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words. 6. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences. 7. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences. 8. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.

III. THE THIRD STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING: RULES FOR CRITICIZING A BOOK AS A COMMUNICATION OF KNOWLEDGE

A. General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette 9. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. (Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgment, until you can say “I understand.”) 10. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously. 11. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.

B. Special Criteria for Points of Criticism 12. Show wherein the author is uninformed. 13. Show wherein the author is misinformed. 14. Show wherein the author is illogical. 15. Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete.

Note: Of these last four, the first three are criteria for disagreement. Failing in all of these, you must agree, at least in part, although you may suspend judgment on the whole, in the light of the last point.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (pp. 161-162). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

*****主题阅读

I. SURVEYING THE FIELD PREPARATORY TO SYNTOPICAL READING

1. Create a tentative bibliography of your subject by recourse to library catalogues, advisors, and bibliographies in books. 2. Inspect all of the books on the tentative bibliography to ascertain which are germane to your subject, and also to acquire a clearer idea of the subject. Note: These two steps are not, strictly speaking, chronologically distinct; that is, the two steps have an effect on each other, with the second, in particular, serving to modify the first.

II. SYNTOPICAL READING OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY AMASSED IN STAGE I 1. Inspect the books already identified as relevant to your subject in Stage I in order to find the most relevant passages. 2. Bring the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology of the subject that all, or the great majority, of the authors can be interpreted as employing, whether they actually employ the words or not. 3. Establish a set of neutral propositions for all of the authors by framing a set of questions to which all or most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers, whether they actually treat the questions explicitly or not. 4. Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an issue or another. You should remember that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, but that it sometimes has to be constructed by interpretation of the authors’ views on matters that may not have been their primary concern. 5. Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject. More general issues should precede less general ones, and relations among issues should be clearly indicated.

Note: Dialectical detachment or objectivity should, ideally, be maintained throughout. One way to insure this is always to accompany an interpretation of an author’s views on an issue with an actual quotation from his text.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (pp. 326-327). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

（二）六部分：书籍分类-想象文学-实用书籍-历史-自然科学-哲学（-社会科学）_主要规则

*****书籍分类

（1）想象文学VS论说书籍

Expository books try to convey knowledge— knowledge about experiences that the reader has had or could have. Imaginative ones try to communicate an experience itself— one that the reader can have or share only by reading— and if they succeed, they give the reader something to be enjoyed.

Because of their radically diverse aims, these two kinds of writing necessarily use language differently. The imaginative writer tries to maximize the latent ambiguities of words, in order thereby to gain all the richness and force that is inherent in their multiple meanings. He uses metaphors as the units of his construction just as the logical writer uses words sharpened to a single meaning. What Dante said of The Divine Comedy, that it must be read as having several distinct though related meanings, generally applies to poetry and fiction. The logic of expository writing aims at an ideal of unambiguous explicitness. Nothing should be left between the lines. Everything that is relevant and statable should be said as explicitly and clearly as possible. In contrast, imaginative writing relies as much upon what is implied as upon what is said. The multiplication of metaphors puts almost more content between the lines than in the words that compose them. The whole poem or story says something that none of its words say or can say.

Centuries ago, Aristotle remarked that “the standard of correctness is not the same in poetry as in politics,” or in physics or psychology for that matter.

The “truth” of a good story is its verisimilitude, its intrinsic probability or plausibility.

When we read a novel we want a story that must be true only in the sense that it could have happened in the world of characters and events that the novelist has created, and re-created in us.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 202). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

An expository book is one that conveys knowledge primarily, “knowledge” being construed broadly. Any book that consists primarily of opinions, theories, hypotheses, or speculations, for which the claim is made more or less explicitly that they are true in some sense, conveys knowledge in this meaning of knowledge and is an expository work.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (pp. 60-61). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

补充（诗歌VS小说VS戏剧）：A lyric tells its story primarily in terms of a single emotional experience, whereas novels and plays have much more complicated plots, involving many characters, their actions and their reactions upon one another, as well as the emotions they suffer in the process. Everyone knows, furthermore, that a play differs from a novel by reason of the fact that it narrates entirely by means of actions and speeches. (There are some interesting exceptions to this, which we will mention later.) The playwright can never speak in his own person, as the novelist can, and frequently does, in the course of a novel.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 204). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

（2）实用书籍VS理论书籍

For such persons, “theoretical” means visionary or even mystical; “practical” means something that works, something that has an immediate cash return. There is an element of truth in this. The practical has to do with what works in some way, at once or in the long run. The theoretical concerns something to be seen or understood. If we polish the rough truth that is here being grasped, we come to the distinction between knowledge and action as the two ends a writer may have in mind.

intelligent action depends on knowledge. Knowledge can be used in many ways, not only for controlling nature and inventing useful machines or instruments but also for directing human conduct and regulating man’s operations in various fields of skill. What we have in mind here is exemplified by the distinction between pure and applied science, or, as it is sometimes very inaccurately expressed, between science and technology.

To make knowledge practical we must convert it into rules of operation. We must pass from knowing what is the case to knowing what to do about it if we wish to get somewhere. This can be summarized in the distinction between knowing that and knowing how. Theoretical books teach you that something is the case. Practical books teach you how to do something you want to do or think you should do.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 66). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

Sometimes you can detect that a book is practical by its title. If the title contains such phrases as “the art of ” or “how to,” you can spot it at once. If the title names fields that you know are practical, such as ethics or politics, engineering or business, and in many cases economics, law, or medicine, you can classify the book fairly readily.

Any guidebook is a practical book. Any book that tells you either what you should do or how to do it is practical. Thus you see that the class of practical books includes all expositions of arts to be learned, all manuals of practice in any field, such as engineering or medicine or cooking, and all treatises that are conveniently classified as moral, such as books on economic, ethical, or political problems.

Apart from manuals and moral treatises (in the broad sense) one other instance of practical writing should be mentioned. An oration— a political speech or moral exhortation— certainly tries to tell you what you should do or how you should feel about something.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 67). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

A practical book will soon betray its character by the frequent occurrence of such words as “should” and “ought,” “good” and “bad,” “ends” and “means.” The characteristic statement in a practical book is one that says that something should be done (or made); or that this is the right way of doing (or making) something; or that one thing is better than another as an end to be sought, or a means to be chosen. In contrast, a theoretical book keeps saying “is,” not “should” or “ought.” It tries to show that something is true, that these are the facts; not that things would be better if they were otherwise, and here is the way to make them better.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 69). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

补充（原理VS规则）：Some, like this one, or a cookbook, or a driver’s manual, are primarily presentations of rules. Whatever other discussion they contain is for the sake of the rules. There are few great books of this sort. The other kind of practical book is primarily concerned with the principles that generate rules. Most of the great books in economics, politics, and morals are of this sort. This distinction is not sharp and absolute. Both principles and rules may be found in the same book.

The point is one of relative emphasis. You will have no difficulty in sorting books into these two piles. The book of rules in any field will always be immediately recognizable as practical. The book of practical principles may look at first like a theoretical book. In a sense it is, as we have seen. It deals with the theory of a particular kind of practice. You can always tell it is practical, however. The nature of its problems gives it away. It is always about a field of human behavior in which men can do better or worse.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 190). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

再补充（历史VS科学VS哲学）：History always deals with things that existed or events that occurred on a particular date and in a particular place.

Science is not concerned with the past as such. It treats of matters than can happen at any time or place. The scientist seeks laws or generalizations. He wants to find out how things happen for the most part or in every case, not, as the historian does, how some particular things happened at a given time and place in the past.

Philosophy is like science and unlike history in that it seeks general truths rather than an account of particular events, either in the near or distant past. But the philosopher does not ask the same questions as the scientist, nor does he employ the same kind of method to answer them.

It is important to know this because, apart from the different kinds of experiences that they depend on, scientists and philosophers do not think in exactly the same way. Their styles in arguing are different. You must be able to find the terms and propositions— here we are getting a little ahead of ourselves— that constitute these different sorts of argumentation.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 73). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

In the case of history, the title usually does the trick. If the word “history” does not appear in the title, the rest of the front matter is likely to inform us that this is a book about something that happened in the past— not necessarily in the far past, of course, because it may have happened only yesterday. The essence of history is narration.The historian narrates these happenings and often colors his narrative with comment on, or insight into, the significance of the events.

There is one criterion that we think always works, although you may have to read a certain amount of the book before you can apply it. If a theoretical book emphasizes things that lie outside the scope of your normal, routine, daily experience, it is a scientific work. If not, it is philosophical.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 71). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

再补充（社会科学）：Such fields as anthropology, economics, politics, and sociology constitute a kind of central core of social science, which almost all social scientists would include in any definition. In addition, we think it would be conceded by most social scientists that much, though not all, of the literature of such fields as law, education, and public administration, and some of the literature of such fields as business and social service, together with a considerable portion of psychological literature, falls within the confines of a reasonable definition.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 292). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

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General Rules for Reading Imaginative Literature

First, we can translate the structural rules— the rules of outlining— into their fictional analogues as follows.

(1) You must classify a work of imaginative literature according to its kind.

(2) You must grasp the unity of the whole work.

(3) You must not only reduce the whole to its simplest unity, but you must also discover how that whole is constructed out of all its parts.

(1) The elements of fiction are its episodes and incidents, its characters, and their thoughts, speeches, feelings, and actions.

(2) Terms are connected in propositions. The elements of fiction are connected by the total scene or background against which they stand out in relief.

(3)The unraveling of the plot (like the arguments or reasoning) is the dynamic connection.

Where, in the case of expository works, the advice was not to criticize a book— not to say you agree or disagree— until you can first say you understand, so here the maxim is: don’t criticize imaginative writing until you fully appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience.

Van Doren, Charles; Mortimer J. Adler. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book) (p. 207). Touchstone. Kindle 版本.

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如果你的阅读目的是获得利益——不论是心灵或精神上的成长——你就得保持清醒。这也意味着在阅读时要尽可能地保持主动。

主动的阅读基础：一个阅读者要提出的四个基本问题

主动阅读是比较好的阅读，检视阅读永远是充满主动的。

主动阅读的核心：你在阅读时要提出问题来——在阅读的过程中，你自己必须尝试去回答问题。

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关于一本书，你一定要提出四个主要问题：

（1） 整体来说，这本书到底在谈些什么？

找出这本书的主题，作者如何依次发展这个主题，如何逐步从核心主题分解出从属的关键议题来

（2） 作者细部说了什么，怎么说的？

找出主要的想法、声明与论点。

（3） 这本书说得有道理吗？是全部有道理，还是部分有道理？

（4） 这本书跟你有什么关系？

这本书给了你资讯？启发？

任何一种超越基础阅读的阅读层次，核心就在你要努力提出问题（然后尽你可能地找出答案）。这是绝不可或忘的原则。

检视阅读似乎对前两个问题要比对后两个更能提出正确的答案。

除非你能回答后面两个问题，否则即使用了分析阅读也不算功德圆满——你必须能够以自己的判断来掌握这本书的整体或部分道理与意义，才算真正完成了阅读。尤其是最后一个问题——这本书跟你有什么关系？——可能是主题阅读中最重要的一个问题。

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------如何让一本书真正属于你自己

仅仅提出问题你不够，你还要试着去回答问题。

俗话说：“你必须读出言外之意，才会有更大的收获。” 此外，我们也鼓励你“写出言外之意”。

为什么对阅读来说，在书上做笔记是不可或缺的事？

第一，那会让你保持清醒。

第二，主动阅读是一种思考，而思考倾向于用语言表达出来——不管是讲的还是写的。

第三，将你的感想写下来，能帮助你记住作者的思想。