Free Books

Recently, I've started ordering free books online:

Free Constitution

Free Quran

Free Book of Revelations that looks like a D&D book?

Free Ayn Rand (but only ebooks :()

All but the D&D book might show up on the blog.

And, as always, remember:

Standard Ebooks

Project Gutenberg

Archive.org

Have fun!

Chewing Bubblegum and Kicking Ass: Eight O'clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson

For some reason, they didn't include a 6 minute fight scene in a six page story.

Stumbled across this at random on the internet today and gave it a read. No sun glasses, instead George "wakes up" when he goes to a hypnotist show and they tell him to wake up. George puppeting the dead alien at the end is funny. Kind of surprised Carpenter didn't keep it, seems like his style. Fun little read on my lunch break.

GWTTGB Intro

 I was all excited for this. I read the first section, and it was some good ol' Adler, "Reading to improve yourself." And then I skimmed a little (like he says to do!) and I saw some subject specific bits, how to mark a book, etc. Great! 400 pages books condensed down to 100ish. Just what I wanted HtRaB to be. Except, not really. Instead of a condensed version of the "How to read..." individual subjects, it's a real broad overview of the subject with quotes sprinkled through. Interesting, but not sure it was super illustrative. Not really well organized either. Could really use some numbered lists and/or bulleting.

As before, I really think Adler probably has a solid 100 pages of content, it's just a matter of putting it together right. Not sure where I'm going next, but see you all tomorrow! 

HtRaB: Final Thoughts

 I thought I had another section, but all that's left at the end are indexes, reading tests, etc. I thought the tests might be worth doing, but lost interest pretty quickly (in large part because of the awkward format of the answers).

So, final thoughts on How to Read a Book: In short, skip it. As I said several times, I agree with a lot of what Adler has to say, but it's highly repetitive, and when it's not repeating it's off on a lot of weird tangents. I'm going back to look at it, but I think there's a condensed version (~100 pages vs ~400) in the intro the Gateway. I'm betting that would be a much more efficient way of getting the same info, since I think you probably could cut a little over half without any issue.

Hopefully wrapping up with Adler towards the end of the week, then not sure what I'll be on next.

HtRaB Chapter 21: Reading and the Growth of the Mind

 I feel like Adler is starting to get a little punch drunk in these later chapters. After rambling about how he invented this cool new Synoptical Reading thing, he says in this chapter that we're probably least familiar with Analytical Reading. I think most people have at least a passing familiarity with close reading. I also want to push back (in a narrow case) on his assertion that fun/shallow books can't be developmental. They can be if, as an active reader (like he wants you to be) you critique them, think about how they can be improved etc. Obviously, the number of people who feel the need to or can gain much from critiquing trash sci-fi novels, but it's not nothing. He goes into a standard rant about how 99% of books are trash, fair. He then says there's probably a few thousand books worth reading once. I think this is a vast underestimating the number of books published per year (can't find a number for when this was published, but millions are published per year these days. Even if you knock it down to a hundred thousand a year, and one book in one thousand being worth reading, that's still a hundred a year. He goes on to say that a mere hundred in all of history are worth rereading. This is comically low. Even if we only go as far back as 1AD, that would mean something like 1 rereadable book came out every 20 years. He does specify that this is specific to each person, so I suppose an entire decade could pass where no book you were interested in rereading came out, but that seems like quite a stretch. 

Finally, read books that challenge you, exercise your brain, etc. All pretty standard.

HtRaB Chapter 20: THE FOURTH LEVEL OF READING! Synoptical Reading

 This section is more of a return to the beginning of the book with goals, questions, etc.  Before getting to the steps in Synoptical Reading, Adler needs to, again, ramble on for a couple pages about how THE SAME WORD CAN HAVE MULTPLE MEANINGS!

As far as the steps go, they're very similar to the ones in the other sections, slightly adjusted or reordred:

1. Find Relevant Passages (NOT RELEVANT BOOKS!)

2. Bring author to terms (WORDS MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS!)

3. Get questions clear

4. Define issues

5. Analyze the discussion

Some discussion of bias, a sales pitch for the Synopticon (it's not a terrible idea, but it's the kind of thing that'd need to be updated regularly, like an encyclopedia, and it only made it through 2 editions in 40 years).

Then, back to WORDS MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS. Again... 

I know I took a month off, but after the super specific sections previously, this really feels like he should've put it with earlier, it seems to fit more there. 

HtRaB Chapter 19: How To Read Social Science

 Adler says that social science is a relatively new field. This is iffy when the first edition was published in 1940, and well out the door by the second in 1972.

He then wastes 10 pages with what can be summarized as: Social Science is amorphous and indefinable.

Phone posting, because he sure phones in this chapter.