Reading Well

A while back I came across an interesting book by Susan Wise Bauer entitled, The Well-Educated Mind: a Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. In it she describes how to read well in general, discusses various categories of literature that one should read, and then makes specific recommendations of books in each category.

I thought that I would share three of the general principles she gives for reading well. The first principle is giving yourself permission not to have to understand everything the first time through (She is assuming that for great literature you will read it more than once.) As she notes, "In truth, it's impossible to fully understand difficult passages until you know how they fit into the rest of the writer's schema" (p. 42).

The second principle, and one that I am happy to report I learned a long time ago, is to write in the books that you read: underline passages, write notes in the margins, turn the corners of the pages down. A lot of people learned from public school where you didn't own the books, you aren't supposed to write in books. But as she notes, since we are grownups, we should if at all possible, buy our books so that we can write in them.

The third principle is to read the title page, then turn and read the back cover, and then move to the table of contents. She recommends not reading the preface unless the author has written it. The preface written by anyone other than the author can give you an interpretation before you have read the book yourself, and in a way prejudicing the way that you read it.

How many of you actually read a book more than one time? How many of you actually write in the books that you read?