How to Read A Book 4

I'm starting to work on my first book post reading How To Read A Book, and it's interesting so far. I will say, taking time to really look through the Table of Contents and Index does a lot to frame my reading- I'm more on the look out for things rather than fully open ended.

I think what I'm going to do is try to build my reference for the book while I'm reading it. So, copy the ToC which I've already done. Then, after I go through the index, note the the interesting topics covered. I want to have those on my blog and easy to get to, and maybe even refer back to that document as I'm reading, and possibly adjust my list as I'm going- remove or add terms, that sort of thing.

At some point I want to go back to Adlers book and look at that back matter some. I'm going to be overwhelmed by the books he lists, but I think there's some works there I should spend some time with. I do think it's worth my time to build up some of my classical reading, and his list, while not perfect, is definitely better than my own. There's also a distinction between what he recommends to read and the references he used in the book.

I've also been thinking about books that I read in the past - what do I want to do with them? Should I go back and do a quick read and at least document the ToC and intersting keywords? I think it could be useful, but also is going to take some time. Then again, especially with the Index, it starts to put more generalizable terms in my brain, which could be very useful.

I do want to add in some of the characterization elements that Adler mentioned in his book- understanding the author a bit more. I'm not entirely sure how to figure out where the author struggled. I'm sure I can finder weaker sections of any given book, but I'm not convinced that's the same thing.

I do want to say one thing about Adler's book that I was a little disappointed, and I think makes sense for why the whole Zettelkasten idea didn't really make sense to me. The issue is similar to the somewhat incompatibility between Analytical and Syntopical reading. Analytical reading is an effort to understand the contributions of a single book; to understand the components and how they are used to build the whole. In a really good book, the hope would be that you may gain deeper understanding of these components- 1 + 1 > 2. Syntopical is more about finding similar components and comparing the treatment of the topic by different authors. There is some room for nuance, but not practically. If your goal is to get the interpretation of some topic by several different authors, you don't have time to read in an analytical sort of way.

Historically I read in the 25-50 books a year range. If I start using inspectional and analytical reading, I suspect that my inspectional number will go up considerably, but my analytical will be lower. This is a good thing- spending time with books that warrant the attention, but it means that if I'm researching a topic of significant interest, I'm only going to be able to study a few books. This is the incompatability I'm feeling.

So Adler really didn't have 4 levels of reading, he has a 3A and 3B. It's not necessary and may be counter productive to read something analytically before reading it syntopically.