Over my lifetime, I have read many books. Few of them are still in my possession. Frequent moves, including three transatlantic ones, took its toll on the personal library. When I try to recall all the books I’ve read, I struggle. There are huge gaps, especially the teenage years when I was knocking them off on an almost daily basis. Fiction of all kinds. Biographies. Histories. Then the work years: the many business books that now blend into nothing I can remember. Not only do I struggle to recall which books I’ve read, I find I retained little of what I was sure I had read.
But should I expect to be able to? I’d like to believe there are books that impacted my life even if I can’t recall now all that I read – even if I recall almost nothing. A very short list of books linger in my mind that I have no doubt influenced me. But doubt remains. Had I read these books – memorable and forgotten – too fast? Had I read too passively? Could I have done more to retain what I read? Did I get what I should have out of the precious time I invested?
If your goal, according to Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren in How to Read a Book, is to “grow in mind and spirit” from what you read, then you must read as actively as possible; you must exert some effort. Good books deserve it.
So, how active had I been?
A lack of effort signifies a lack of commitment. If you lack the intention to actively consume whatever it is your reading (I’ll focus here on books, but it apples to anything), then this form of mental laziness sabotages the experience. Allowing you mind to wander, for example, and discovering at the end of a paragraph or a page that you haven’t absorbed what you’ve read demands a re-read. And this requires discipline to do it. Active reading is the ability to commit yourself to absorb every word, to capture the meaning, and in the case of fiction and poetry, to appreciate the artistry in the language. You must give what a good book asks of you if you hope to be enriched by it.
One basic principle applies to active reading: Ask questions while you read, and, as you read, try to answer these questions yourself.
When I think back to some of the books – the best ones – I read when young, I recognized that I had asked too few questions, probably even some wrong questions – I had asked too little of the book. This applied even to those books that had made a huge impression on me.
The kind of questions you ask are important. Adler and Van Doren suggest four that are foundational: they form a framework that leads to understanding. While these questions are applicable primarily to non-fiction, with a little imagination, they can be adapted to fiction and poetry.
- What is the book about? This isn’t meant to simply identify the topic – you would have done that when you inspected the book and chose to read it. Here you want to grasp the overall theme and how it’s developed; you want to get a sense for sub-themes. It’s what compelled the writer to go to the effort of writing the book, to convey a message that should be your goal to discover.
- What depth of meaning does it impart? In a reasonably structured way, you should be working not only to fully understand the message but also to grasp the credibility of it. What are the main ideas? What evidence supports the arguments or claims? This is what the writer has presented to prove their point, to convince the reader of their views or, in fiction, to perhaps challenge the reader to question themselves.
- Is the book true? Based on what you’ve read and understood, you must decide for yourself if the content – the message or theme – is persuasive. Has the writer convinced you? Did Robert Sapolsky convince you, based on his arguments and evidence in Determined, that there is no free will? Did Dostoevsky convince you in the Brothers Karamazov that if there is no God, then all is allowed? If you can answer this question about the truth of it in a way that satisfies you, then you’ve drawn a valuable understanding of the book.
- So what? Ask yourself what significance does the book hold. Is it important to you? Did it compel you to read more of the same author, to search out more fiction like it, or non-fiction that addresses the same topic? Did the book influence you in a meaningful way? Did it make an impression?
These four questions form the basis for an active reader to make appropriate demands of a good book. If these and other questions aren’t asked of it, you’re reading passively. You will get little from the experience. In fact, you’re probably in the habit of reading more as a pastime, which is fine for entertainment. But you will gain nothing if you treat good books the same way. If you lack the urge to read actively, you will likely never be drawn to good books and miss a whole rich and unique dimension of the human experience.
The answers to your questions are what makes the book you read your own. In this way, you mastered the material; you opened the door to that dimension and profited by it. You can agree with Sapolsky or argue against Dostoevsky because their books left a significant and lasting impression. By being an active reader, you will not only be better able to recall the books you’ve read but be confident in the impact the best ones made on you.
Now I have some re-reading to do.