Everyone who has received formal education, from ancient times to the present, can not do without reading. The object of reading can be beautiful or ugly; It may be healthy or moldy, it may be difficult or superficial. But in any case, through reading, my mind is connected with the outside world, with the classic sages, with all levels of society and with all levels of knowledge. This connection will carve different statues of souls. Today, reading takes more forms, such as the Internet, such as television and other media. Reading is the interaction of communication and acceptance. No matter what form it takes, reading can almost be said to be an instinct, from the time when human beings entered the history of faith or civilization to today. Old, but not old. In a colorful world, reading is still a basic life skill. Special reminder: the following part of this article belongs to reading notes, with more excerpts. So, if you are not interested in reading, please stop here. I have studied for many years. Do you really know how to study? Solving your own problems includes: sleepiness, a hammer in the east, a stick in the west, memory, lateral mastery and so on. "Great authors are often great readers, but that doesn't mean they have read all the books. Reading is indispensable only in our life. In many cases, they read fewer books than we did in college, but they read them very carefully. Because they are very proficient in the books they read, their level can be comparable to that of the author. They have the right to be called authority. In this case, naturally, good students will usually become teachers and good readers will also become authors. " I found a great book, How to Read, and I have an ambition: to be a great reader. According to Mortimer J. Ejdero (1902-2001), a scholar, educator and editor, he enjoys a high reputation. In addition to discussing how to read a book edited by German Classics in the Western World and the first edition of Encyclopedia Britannica from 65438 to 0974, reading can be divided into four levels: basic reading, investigation reading, analytical reading and thematic reading. First, basic reading is: it can be roughly divided into four stages-the first stage-reading preparation stage-equivalent to preschool education or kindergarten learning experience. The second stage-literacy-is equivalent to the typical learning experience of first-year students (although quite a few normal children are not all "typical" in some aspects). As a result of this stage, children have learned what we call the second stage of reading skills, or the reading ability of the first grade, or the most elementary reading and writing ability. The third stage-vocabulary growth and text use-is usually a method learned at the end of the fourth grade (but it is not comprehensive, even for normal children). The result of this stage can be called "fourth grade literacy" or "functional literacy", that is, you can easily read traffic signs or picture descriptions and fill in the government. In the fourth and final stage, students will graduate from primary school or junior high school. This stage is sometimes called eighth grade, ninth grade or tenth grade literacy. To some extent, the child has become a "mature" reader. He can read almost all books, but he is not sophisticated enough. In short, he is mature enough to take high school courses. In any case, he is not a mature reader. But he has mastered the first level of reading, that's all. He can read by himself and is ready to learn more reading skills. But he still doesn't know how to go beyond basic reading and do further reading. Generally speaking, the four stages of basic reading have a teacher to guide, answer questions and eliminate problems that will occur at this stage. Only when a child has mastered the four stages of basic reading can he be ready to move forward to a higher level of reading. Only when he can read by himself can he begin to teach himself. Only in this way can he become a truly excellent reader. Second, the second level of reading is called inspection reading: inspection reading is the real reading level. Investigation reading can be divided into systematic skimming or rough reading and shallow reading. (1) The so-called "system skimming or skimming" means: First, you don't know if you want to read this book. You don't know whether this book is worth analyzing and reading. But you think, or as long as you can dig it out, the information and opinions in the book are at least useful to you; Secondly, we assume-as is often the case-that you want to explore everything, but time is limited-to do a "skimming" of the whole book, or some people say it is a pre-reading. Skimming or skimming is the first sub-level of reading. Your goal in mind is to find out whether this book is worth spending more time reading carefully. Secondly, even if you decide not to spend more time reading this book carefully, skimming can tell you a lot. After browsing, you may find that this book is only useful for you at present. The value of this book is only so much. But at least you know what the author's important proposition is, or what kind of book he wrote. Therefore, the time you spend skimming this book is by no means a waste. For this reading state, the author's suggestion is (1) to read the title page first, and if it is orderly, read the order first. Take a quick look. Pay special attention to the subtitle, or other relevant explanations or purposes, or the author's special angle in writing this book. Before completing this step, you have an idea of the theme of this book. If you like, you will pause and classify the book into a specific type in your mind. And which books are included in that genre. (2) Study the catalogue and get a general understanding of the basic structure of this book. It's like looking at a map before you leave for a trip. (3) If there is an index in the book, review it-most books on debate will have an index. Quickly evaluate the scope of topics covered in this book, as well as the types and authors of the books mentioned. If you find that one of the listed words is very important, at least look at some pages that quote this word. The paragraph you read is probably a key point-the key point of this book-or a new method related to the author's intention and attitude. (4) If it is a new book wrapped in a book coat, you may wish to look at the introduction of the publishing house. Many people's impression of advertising copy is nothing more than boasting and exaggerating. But this is often biased, especially for some argumentative papers. Generally speaking, the propaganda copy of many books is written by the author himself with the assistance of the corporate propaganda department of the publishing company. It is not unusual for these authors to try their best to sum up the main idea of this book correctly. These efforts should not be ignored. Of course, if you don't write any key points in the propaganda copy, it's easy to be seen through if you just brag. However, it will also help you learn more about this book. Maybe there is nothing important to talk about in this book-that's why their propaganda copy is not desirable. After completing these four steps, you will have enough information about a book to judge whether you want to read the book more carefully or not at all. In either case, you can put this book aside for the time being. If not, now you are ready to browse a book. (5) From your impression that the catalogue of a book is rough or even a little vague, start to select a few chapters that seem to be closely related to the theme. If these chapters have summaries at the beginning or end (many will), you should read them carefully. (6) The last step is to open the book, turn it over and read a paragraph or two. Sometimes I read several pages in a row, but not too many. In this way, turn over the book, look for the signal of the main argument at any time, and pay attention to the basic pulse of the theme. Above all, don't ignore the last two or three pages. Even if there is a postscript at the end, the last two or three pages of a book can't be ignored. Few writers can resist the temptation not to rearrange what they think is new and important in the last few pages. Although sometimes the author's own views are not necessarily correct, you should not miss this part. Now you have read a book systematically. You have finished the first reading. Now, you have learned a lot about this book in a few minutes, not more than an hour. In particular, do you want to know whether this book contains what you want to continue digging, and whether it is worth your time and energy? You should also know better than before which category this book should be classified in your mind so that you can learn from it when you need it in the future. By the way, this is a very active reading. If a person is not flexible enough to concentrate on reading, he can't read. How many times have you been reading a good book, turned over a few pages, but lost in daydreaming in your mind, and when you woke up, you had no idea what the pages you just read were talking about? If you follow the steps we suggest, it will never happen-because you always have a system to follow the author's ideas. You can imagine yourself as a detective, looking for clues to the theme or idea of a book. Always be sensitive, it's easy to figure everything out. Paying attention to our suggestions will help you maintain this attitude. You will be surprised to find that you have saved more time, glad that you have mastered more key points, and then it is easy to find that reading is easier than you think. I think this kind of reading is the process of discovering a book: in short, it is to use all the information provided by books to read books-catalogs, prefaces, indexes, book advertisements, and even some paragraphs in the text and conclusion of the book, so that the basic outline and structure of the book can be mastered in your own hands. Here, I think some book reviews can be added to help others complete the process of reading and chewing. Even skimming, stick to a good reading habit, so that you can catch the whole fish instead of a fragment in the usual sense. (2) As long as the shallow reading finds the right direction, no matter how difficult the book is, as long as it is intended for the public, there is no reason to be discouraged. Right direction? The answer is a very simple, but important and helpful reading rule: when facing a difficult book for the first time, read it from beginning to end, and don't stop to ask or think about what you don't understand. If you allow yourself to be bound by a stubborn paragraph, you are defeated. In most cases, once you are entangled with it, it is difficult to get out. You may know more about this place when you read it the second time, but before that, you should at least read the book from beginning to end. Here, I found that the education circles in China and the United States are the same: when you encounter something you don't understand, you must check the information, ask the teacher and find out. However, in the book How to Read, a very important argument is pointed out: If we do these things before time, it will only hinder our reading, not help. Because this torture procedure will deprive people of the pleasure of reading first (a bit like learning Lu Xun's works in middle school). Secondly, if you dwell too much on details, you will miss some clear principles. Can't read well at any level. At this level, we need to pay attention to the following questions: 1, reading speed: people can read faster, but for reading books, the speed changes according to the needs-in the dragon and the dragon, Wang Yuyan heard that Mu Rongfu was particularly anxious when practicing the dog beating method, which should be the reason. 2. Stay back: affect speed and waste brain power. 3. Understand the problem. 4. Be a self-demanding reader: it is very easy to get sleepy when reading. But many people can read books by candlelight at night, which should not be simply interpreted as being very human. It's probably not a good habit for Su Yi to study in the form of hanging beam and stabbing stocks, but is it really an active reader to steal the column? Whether you want to stay awake or fall asleep while reading depends mainly on what your reading goal is. If your reading goal is to gain benefits-whether spiritual or spiritual growth-you have to stay awake. This also means being as active as possible while reading and making some efforts. Reading is not entertainment, but gain benefits from it. As long as it goes beyond the reading level of basic reading, the art of reading is to ask the right questions in the right order. You must ask four main questions about a book. (1) Generally speaking, what is this book about? You must try to find out the theme of this book, how the author develops this theme in turn, and how to gradually decompose the subordinate key issues from the core theme. (2) What did the author say in detail and how did he say it? You must try to find out the main points, statements and arguments. These combine to form the special information that the author wants to convey. (3) Is this book meaningful? All makes sense, or some? You can't answer this question unless you can answer the first two questions. Before you judge whether this book is meaningful, you must first understand what the whole book is saying. However, when you know a book, if you read it carefully, you will feel obligated to make your own judgment for it. It is not enough to know the author's thoughts. (4) What does this book have to do with you? If this book gives you some information, you must ask what it means. Why does the author think it is important to know this? Do you really need to know? If this book not only provides information, but also inspires you, it is even more necessary to look for other relevant and deeper meanings or suggestions to get more enlightenment. I think the key to these four questions is to build a bridge between myself and the book on the basis of understanding the author. 5. How to make a book truly belong to yourself? Collecting stamps only represents paper possession, not intellectual possession. If you have the habit of asking questions while reading, you will be better than readers who don't have this habit. However, as we emphasized, it is not enough to just ask questions. You must try to answer these questions. And this process of answering questions may be done in the brain, but it would be better if it could be done with a pen-I am using the keyboard now. There is an old saying in China that "speaking is light and important". It is said that half of The Analects can rule the world. Then how to read and write the literal things, and then really turn the book into a part of yourself and truly complete the possession of the book. (1) Taking notes in books is not available because: First, it will keep you awake-not only not sleepy, but also very awake. Secondly, reading, if it is active, is a kind of thinking, and thinking is often expressed in language-whether spoken or written. If a person says he knows what he is thinking, but he can't say it, it is usually that he doesn't really know what he is thinking. Third, writing down your feelings can help you remember the author's thoughts. Here are some methods that can be used: (1) Underline-underline the main points or important and powerful sentences. (2) Draw a line outside the underlined column-emphasize the part that you have drawn a line, or a paragraph is very important, but if the line is too long, add a mark to the whole paragraph. (3) Make asterisks or other symbols in the blank-use them carefully, just to emphasize more than a dozen most important sentences or paragraphs in the book. You might as well fold a corner on each page in the marked place, or put a bookmark, so that you can pick up the book from the shelf at any time, open the marked place and wake up the memory. (4) Blank numbering-When an argument of the author develops a series of important statements, it can be numbered in sequence. (5) Write down other page numbers in the blank-emphasize that the author has put forward the same argument in other parts of the book, or related opinions, or in places different from here. Doing so can unify the communication ideas of the whole book. Many readers will use symbols such as Cf to indicate comparison or reference. (6) Circle the key words or sentences-this is the same as drawing the bottom line. Take notes in the margin-you may have some questions (or answers) when reading a chapter. Write them in the blank space, which will help you remember your questions or answers. You can also simplify complex arguments and explain them in the margin. Or write down the development order of all the main arguments in the book. The last page of the book can be used as a personal index page to record the author's main points in order. Three ways to take notes When reading a book, you may have three different opinions, so there will be three different ways to take notes. The way you take notes depends entirely on your reading level. A. When examining reading, the questions to be answered are: First, what kind of book is this? Second, what is the whole book talking about? Thirdly, what overall framework does the author use to develop his views or state his understanding of this topic? You should take notes and write down the answers to these questions. Especially if you know that one day, maybe a few days or months later, you will pick up this book again for analysis and reading, so it is more important to write down the questions and answers first. The best place to take these notes is the table of contents page, or the title page, which is not used in the note-taking method mentioned earlier. It should be noted here that these notes mainly focus on the structure of the book, not the content-at least not the details. Therefore, we call such notes structural notes. B, structural notes and concept notes) are completely different. And when you are reading several books at the same time and doing theme reading-reading many different books on the same theme, what kind of notes do you want to take? Similarly, such notes should also be conceptual. The page number you wrote in the blank of the book is not only the page number of this book, but also the page numbers of several other books. C, for a professional reader who has been proficient in reading several books on the same subject at the same time, there is a higher level of note-taking method. This is a record of the discussion-many authors participated in this discussion, and they may not always observe their participation. We like to call such notes dialectical notes. Because this is summarized from many books, not one book, it usually needs to be recorded on a separate piece of paper. At this point, we will use the conceptual structure again-list all relevant statements and questions in order on a single topic. 6. Cultivate the habit of reading. The so-called art or skill belongs only to those who can form the habit and operate according to the rules. This is also the difference between artists or craftsmen in any field. There is no other way to form a habit except to keep practicing. Knowing the rules of an art is different from forming a habit. When we talk about a skilled person, we don't mean that he knows how to do it, but that he has formed the habit of doing it. Of course, whether you know the rules clearly enough is the key to skill. If you don't know what the rules are, you can't follow them. And if you can't follow the rules, you can't form artistic habits or any skills. Art, like other things with rules, can be learned and operated. Just like forming a habit of other things, you can form a habit as long as you practice according to the rules. Form habits from many rules. For reading, just like any other complicated exercise, it is necessary to decompose the movements one by one-from knowing the rules to practicing, to practicing repeatedly and even being proficient, and then unify the rules into a whole to form a complete and fluent reading habit. The third level: reading analysis the first stage: find out what a book is talking about. The first rule: book classification, you must know what kind of books you are reading, the sooner you know, the better. It's best to know before you start reading. -The first rule of analytical reading, although applicable to all books, is especially suitable for reading non-fiction and explanatory books. For example, what can you learn from the title of a book-1859, Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species, not the Origin of Species; The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, rather than the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, can be classified as follows: first, fiction; second, expository texts conveying knowledge. In explanatory books, we can further classify history and philosophy, and also distinguish them from science and mathematics. A basic classification principle applies to all argumentative works. This is also the principle used to distinguish between theoretical and practical works. First of all, you should learn to doubt everything. You should be skeptical about the classification of books. As we have emphasized, books on economics are basically practical books, but there are still some books on economics that are purely theoretical. Similarly, although books about understanding are usually theoretical books, there are still some books (most of which are horrible) that want to teach you how to think. You will also find that many writers can't tell the difference between theory and practice, just as novelists can't tell what is a novel and what is sociology. You will also find that part of a book belongs to this category, while the other part belongs to another category, such as Spinoza's Ethics. However, all these remind you of the benefits of being a reader. Through this advantage, you can find out how the author faces the problems he has to deal with. According to the traditional classification method, theoretical works will be divided into history, science and philosophy. Everyone knows the difference roughly. However, if you want to make a more detailed division and a more accurate division, the difficulty will come. There is a judgment that we think will always be valid, but you may have to read a book quite a lot before you can apply it. If a theoretical book emphasizes not only your daily, routine and normal life experience, it is a scientific book. Otherwise, it is a philosophy book. Remember, this only applies to science or philosophy books, not to other types of books. The role of classification: different books convey different knowledge and guide us in different ways. If we want to follow the guidance of these books, we should learn to read different books with an appropriate attitude. The second rule of analytical reading is to describe the whole book with a single sentence or at most a few words (a short paragraph). First of all, an author, especially a good author, often wants to help you sort out the key points in his book. Nevertheless, when you ask readers to choose the main points of a book, most people will look blank. One reason is that people nowadays generally don't express themselves in concise language, and another reason is that they ignore the law of reading. Of course, this also shows that too many readers simply don't pay attention to the author's preface or title, which will lead to such a result. Second, be careful. There may be more than one key summary of a book, and there is usually no absolutely unique explanation. The overall spirit of a book can be interpreted in many ways, and none of them is necessarily correct. Of course, some explanations are better than others because they are concise, accurate and easy to understand. But there are also some diametrically opposite interpretations, either as wonderful or as bad. However, this does not mean that you can say what you like. Although the readers are different, the book itself is still the same. No matter who abstracted it, there is still an objective standard to test its correctness and authenticity. The third rule can be said to be: list the important chapters in the book and explain how they form a whole structure in order. The most readable work is that the author has reached the most complete overall architecture in architecture. The best books have the wisest structure. Although they are usually more complicated than some bad books, their complexity is also simple, because all their parts are better organized and more unified. Simple formula: The outline of the content is as follows: (1) The author divides the book into five parts, the first part is what to say, the second part is what to say, the third part is what to say, the fourth part is what to say, and the fifth part is what to say. (2) The first main part is divided into three sections, the first section is X, the second section is Y, and the third section is Z. (3) In the first stage of the first part, the author has four key points, the first is A, the second is B, the third is C, and the fourth is D, etc. Even if you are proficient in reading skills, you don't have to read every book with the same effort. You will find it a waste to use these skills in some books. Even the best readers will only choose a few related books and make a general outline according to the requirements of this rule. The fourth rule can be said to be: find out the author's intentions and find out the questions the author wants to ask. The author of a book always has a question or a series of questions when he starts writing, and the content of this book is an answer or many answers. You should know that the first four rules are holistic and have the same goal. Together, these four rules can help readers understand the structure of a book. When you use these four rules to read a book, or any long and difficult book, you have completed the first stage of analytical reading. The second stage of analytical reading: the rule of finding out what a book is saying (reading the content of a book): the first rule, which we call "finding out * * *" for short. In short, you must grasp the important words in the book and find out how the author uses them. But we can say it more accurately and elegantly: find important words and understand the author through them. It should be noted that this rule is divided into two parts. The first part is to find out the important words, those important words. The second part is to confirm the most accurate meaning of these words when they are used. Rules, the goal is not to list the framework of a book, but to interpret the content and information. The ambiguity of word meaning hinders communication, and the interaction between the author and the reader cannot be realized in reading. The function of this rule is to remove these obstacles. The second rule: grasp the author's important topic from the most important sentence. The third rule: find out the author's arguments and reconstruct the cause and effect of these arguments, so as to understand the author's views. The fourth rule: determine which problems the author has solved and which ones have not. Among the unsolved problems, determine the problems that the author thinks he can't solve. The third stage of analytical reading explains the conditions of critical reading. At this stage, readers should be able to "argue" with the author. First: first, ask readers to understand a book completely, and don't start criticizing in a hurry. Second: I implore readers not to argue and not to object blindly. Third, different views on knowledge are regarded as generally solvable problems. If this law goes further, readers are required to find theoretical basis for their different views, so that this topic will not only be said, but also be explained clearly. Only in this way can we hope to solve this problem.