Many netizens in Zhihu replied: Some books have a lot of moisture, and it is easy to put out the fire when they are burned.
In fact, as Zhihu netizen "Huang" mentioned in the favorable reply to this question: "This question is not a question of' what books do you hate', but a question of knowledge redundancy and information density."
In fact, according to the average person's extensive reading speed of 400-500 words per minute and the average life expectancy of 77 years old, assuming that reading begins at the age of 7, taking a publication with about 200,000 words as an example, reading 1 hour is about 30,000 words a day, then you can finish reading 1 book in one week, and each person can read about 55 books a year, which is about 3,850 books in a lifetime.
Let's take a look at the largest library in Asia: the National Library of China, with a collection of 37,686,200 books, including nearly 2 million ancient books.
There are so many books that we can only read a few. How to avoid redundant absorption of knowledge and improve information density is a problem that we should solve. There are many books that we don't have to read carefully, or even read carefully.
So, how to choose books? How to read books that need intensive reading and those that don't?
Mortimer J. Edlow and Charles Van Doren's How to Read a Book can help us solve this problem. In the book, the two authors also simply explained that many books are not worth skimming, so we must learn to switch reading speed.
How to read the first edition 1940 revised, 1972 revised. This book talks in detail about how to read, how to gain more knowledge and improve your understanding through reading, and gives very detailed suggestions.
The authors of this book are Mortimer J. Ejdero and Charles Van Doren.
Mortimer J. Edlow (1902-200 1) is a famous scholar, educator and editor. Besides writing about how to read a book, he is also famous as the editor-in-chief of classic works in the western world and the editor-in-chief of the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (65438-0974).
Charles Van Doren (1926-) is a professor at Columbia University. After I left for some reason, I worked with Ajdero. On the one hand, it helped Ejdero edit the Encyclopedia Britannica, on the other hand, it greatly supplemented and rewritten the contents of the first edition of this book (1940). So the new edition of this book 1970 is jointly signed by two people.
About Charles Van Doren, there is also a movie called Quiz, which tells the story of his participation in the most popular TV quiz show in the United States in the 1950s. Although his answer is witty and well-read, it is suspected of fraud. The film was also nominated for Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor at the 67th Academy Awards on 1995.
Let's get down to business.
Some people may think, who can't read? In fact, reading may not be as simple as we think.
We all know that interest is the best teacher. As long as we want to take the initiative to do anything, we will solve difficulties, explore and discover, and gain more.
The same is true of reading. Reading is an active learning. We don't have a teacher to guide us, and no one else to teach us. We must discover and understand ourselves by ourselves.
When reading is difficult, some people will ask other people or books for help.
For example, some people will choose to attend lectures by red scientists and learn about A Dream of Red Mansions. There are also many listening apps now. After reading the book by himself, the storyteller chooses the key points in the book and tells the audience with his own understanding and sentiment.
Although Mortimer J. Edlow and Charles Van Doren did not approve reading in How to Read a Book. They believe that the so-called reading is to read and understand without relying on external forces, so as to break through the cocoon.
But personally, "the nature of a gentleman is the same, and good and evil are also in things." In the case of limited time, we can also choose to help screen books and help understand them, because some scholars and storytellers do have their own unique opinions.
In short, if you want to take the initiative to read, it is a prerequisite to start reading, and then you can seek help from others.
We should take the initiative to find out those books that are valuable to us. Good books can not only help us increase our knowledge, but also help us cultivate our sentiments and grow.
How to read recommended a long list of books. There are 137 books. The version I saw has not been translated into Chinese. Interested readers can find it by themselves, compare and choose and read it.
In Mao Mu's Reading Mao Mu's Prose, Mao Mu thinks that reading is for enjoyment.
Although Mortimer J. Ejdero and Charles Van Doren think: "The goal of reading is to read for information and to read for understanding." But they all agree that both of these goals can bring us enjoyment.
Among them, improving understanding is more important and can help us understand more things.
In order to improve our understanding ability, we should read books beyond our understanding ability, so as to improve, but we should control the distance and overcome it to some extent.
This reminds me of Colm Tobin's The Master. The book "Master" belongs to the first-class book for me. Although it has been translated into Chinese, I have a hard time reading it, but I feel I am doing English reading comprehension.
However, one of my favorite writers once said that you should read books beyond your reading level, so that you can make progress. So I decided to study for a master's degree in the future.
In order to improve our understanding ability, when we want to read a book on our own initiative, we should also ask four basic questions:
These four basic questions are a general framework, and we can ask different questions for different books.
When reading, we should also try our best to chew and digest the contents of the book, find the answers, and develop the good habit of taking notes.
Here, I recommend the note-taking method proposed by Kono Xuanzhi in How to Read a Book Effectively: the reading notes of Onion Tuna [wěi] Hot Pot Style, that is, excerpts and feelings.
Just write down your feelings in the part of the book where you feel. This method is easier to use.
Wang Guowei once said that there are three realms of learning:
According to Mortimer J. Ejdero and Charles Van Doren, reading also has four levels, and these four levels are gradually progressive, and the latter includes the former process.
That is to say, first read simply, learn vocabulary symbols, be able to understand simple reading materials, constantly improve their reading skills and cultivate their basic reading ability. How to correctly cultivate children's reading habits at this stage is also given in How to Read a Book.
That is, you can finish reading the content within the specified time and grasp the key points. Inspection readings can be divided into two types.
One is to skim or skim systematically to determine whether you want to read or not, and whether this book is worth reading by yourself, so as to help you find relevant information in a limited time. After skimming, you need to determine whether it is useful to you, know the author's point of view, and know what kind of book he wrote.
In this step, we can choose to browse the title, preface, catalogue, introduction of the publishing house, etc., or we can browse at will and read a few pages in the part of the book that we are interested in.
Here, I want to talk about the waist seal of the book.
At first, I thought the girdle was a troublesome thing, which was inconvenient to keep, and the propaganda content on the girdle might be inaccurate. But then I gradually realized that the copy on the waist seal is actually the essence of a book. Although some may have problems, many waist seals are very successful.
From the writer's point of view, we should learn the waist seal; From the reader's point of view, we should learn to distinguish books according to their waistcoats.
The second kind of inspection reading is superficial reading. In other words, read it from beginning to end, and don't stop to ask and think when you encounter unfamiliar words or places you don't understand. Jolin Tsai, who graduated from the English Department of Fu Jen Catholic University, was like this when she read the original English version of Harry Potter in her early years. When she meets strange words, she will choose to ignore them and continue reading.
I think this state is the same as when we get a novel and can't wait to start reading it. We don't care about environmental description or historical background. We just want to see the story of the protagonist and know their ending, so we automatically block out many details and only look at the story.
This can maximize the fun of reading and reduce the resistance.
Analytical reading, as its name implies, is to read a book analytically. Analytical reading is divided into three stages:
The book also gives detailed suggestions for each stage.
When figuring out what a book is about, the earlier you figure out the classification of books, the better. Different types of books and authors discuss problems in different ways. Using the principle of inspection, we can know the category, direction and content of books as soon as possible.
And at this point, "learn to doubt everything. You should be skeptical about the classification of books. "
The subtitle of the best-selling book Genius in the Left and Madman in the Right is Notes on the First Interview of Mental Patients in China, and the suggestions for its shelves are psychology and social science. However, the author once wrote in the postscript of the first edition that nearly 20 articles in the book are real cases, some of which are additions and deletions to real cases. Half the stories in the book are fiction.
Wait, there is also a "currency war". At first I took this book seriously as a history book, but later I found it was just a novel.
After classifying with suspicion, according to different books, we can use different reading methods to highlight the key points. The book also gives different reading methods for different books (literature, history, social sciences, philosophy, newspapers and magazines, etc.). ) detailed.
Then, try to describe the whole book in one sentence or several sentences.
This is actually a very training thing. This summary emphasizes the integrity of the book. We should be able to simply tell the content and characteristics of the whole book, instead of just saying "good-looking" when people ask what's good about this book.
A good author may tell you what the whole book says in the title and preface, but he can also explore it himself and express it in concise language.
It is also mentioned in this book that there may be differences between the reader's understanding and the author's expression, but it is not surprising that there may be differences, as long as they are based on respect and are properly discussed and corrected.
If you want to read more systematically, welcome to the fourth floor: thematic reading.
According to your own needs, set a theme and focus on it. You can read a lot of relevant data and compare and sort out the correlation between them. For example, what is your opinion on this theme? Do you have any different opinions?
In fact, many reading cafes, bookstores and publishing houses will have their own social accounts and recommend some themed books. We can pay attention to them according to our own interests and style preferences.
How to read a book by Mortimer J. Ejdero and Charles Van Doren can be regarded as a very orthodox book that introduces how to read, giving people the feeling of a college textbook. So casual readers may think this book is too serious and correct, but as this book teaches, we can choose whether to read this book or not by skimming it, and we can also express our opinions.
Liang Wendao once commented on this book:
We often envy people who can read 100 books or more every year, but the author tells us: "To avoid such a mistake-the mistake of thinking that reading too much is reading well-we must distinguish between different reading forms."
We can read more systematically through the four levels of reading, choose different reading speeds according to the contents of books, and switch between them freely, so as to learn independently and read better without wasting every reading and enjoyment.