The ability of radio to give us information while we are engaged in doing other things-for instance, driving a car-is remarkable, and a great saving of time. Admittedly, television serves some of these functions extremely well the visual communication of news events, for example, has enormous impact.
Radio and especially television have taken over many of the functions once served by print, just as photography has taken over functions once served by painting and other graphic arts. There is some feeling nowadays that reading is not as necessary as it once was. They knew that they had to read too, and they did read. But for intelligent and curious people that was never enough. Not all of it, of course even in the days before radio and television, a certain amount of information and understanding was acquired through spoken words and through observation. Even more particularly, it is for those whose main purpose in reading books is to gain increased understanding.īy “readers” we mean people who are still accustomed, as almost every literate and intelligent person used to be, to gain a large share of their information about and their understanding of the world from the written word. Particularly, it is for readers of books. This is a book for readers and for those who wish to become readers. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text.Īlso included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works.įinally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests you can use measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension, and speed. Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them-from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material.Ī CNN Book of the Week: “Explains not just why we should read books, but how we should read them.
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