Concept
Levels of Reading
The levels of reading are Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's four depths of reading (elementary, inspectional, analytical and syntopical), each building on the one before, so that a reader chooses how deeply to read a book according to what the book is and what the reader needs from it.
In How to Read a Book, first published by Adler in 1940 and revised with Van Doren in 1972, reading is treated as a skill with stages rather than one activity. Elementary reading answers what a sentence says. Inspectional reading answers, in limited time, what kind of book this is and what it covers. Analytical reading is the thorough reading of one book until you understand it and can judge it. Syntopical reading puts several books on one subject side by side to answer a question none of them answers alone. The point is not that every book deserves the deepest level. Most do not. The common mistake is reading everything at the same speed and depth: a light article as slowly as a textbook, or a demanding book as quickly as a newspaper. Choosing the level first saves time on weak books and gives strong ones the attention they need.
A real-life example
Burcu, a marketing specialist in Izmir, keeps a pile of twelve business books she means to read cover to cover. She tries the levels instead: twenty minutes of inspection for each book. Eight turn out to repeat ideas she already knows, and she keeps their tables of contents in a note. Three get an analytical reading over the next month, and one becomes the start of a comparison on pricing.
How to use it
- 1Before opening a book, write one line on why you are reading it and which level that purpose needs.
- 2Give every new book an inspectional reading first; decide only afterwards whether it earns an analytical one.
- 3Keep the deepest level for the few books that answer a question you actually have.