Only undertake this type of reading if you truly wish to learn about the subject. It’s the most demanding level, and it’s wasted on a book you don’t care about.

These are my notes on the analytical level from How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler. The four questions further down are his, and the book is the full treatment if this clicks for you.

Part of the goal here is working out whether a book is even worth this much time and effort in the first place.

First — look up the author

Before you start, go and read about who wrote it. Get a personal connection with the author and you’ll feel more connected to the book. I have real life experience with this — it changes how the whole thing reads.

Generate questions about the author while you’re at it. What were they reacting to? What did they believe? Who were they arguing with?

Second — do a quick inspectional read

Skim it first. Table of contents, chapter openings and closings, headings.

Notice what these first two steps have in common: they’re both a way of forcing your mind to be interested in the book before you commit. You’re manufacturing interest deliberately, and that’s the point.

Third — read it fast the first time

Read the book rather quickly. Don’t stop to think about why. Just flow through it.

Getting the whole shape of the argument in your head beats grinding page one to death for an hour. You can go back.

Fourth — use aids only if you have to

Don’t reach for Google. Try your best to understand what you’re reading from the context of the book itself.

The struggle is doing the work. Every time you outsource a hard passage to a search engine you skip the part where your brain actually builds the understanding.

Fifth — answer these four questions

This is the core of analytical reading. If you can answer all four, you’ve read the book properly:

1. What is this book about as a whole?
2. What is being said in detail, and how?
3. Is the book true — in whole or in part?
4. What of it? What’s the significance?

Question three is the one people skip. You’re allowed to decide a well-regarded book is wrong. Question four is the one that decides whether reading it changed anything.

Sixth — judge it, and say so out loud

Form a verdict and share your thoughts with other people.

Don’t be a zombie. Have your own opinions on the subject. A book you can’t argue about is a book you didn’t really read — you just passed your eyes over it and absorbed the author’s position wholesale.

Where this fits

Analytical is the third of four levels. The other three — elementary, inspectional and syntopical — are in the 4 types of reading, along with when to use each.

If you want the output side to improve too, improved writing covers that.

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