/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15435092]

Is it just me or is this book really boring and hard to get through?

Should I keep going or give up on it?

[Anonymous No.15435460]

>>15435092
Give it up. Read bloom's how to read

[Anonymous No.15435585]

>>15435092

This book is so easy. Seriously what is hard about it? Just skip the irrelevant parts. Read part one and two, then cherry pick part three. I read that book in a two days or something.

There is this other the anon mentioned, but I think Adler is enough to provide a solid foundation on reading literature. At least for the layperson, zero reason, for going through a bunch of different books on reading.

[Anonymous No.15435609]

>>15435092
How to read a book was refuted by the kindle.

[Anonymous No.15435616]

Actually started today.
its an instructional piece its not suppose to be entertaining

[Anonymous No.15435645]

>>15435616

Yes, but I didn't thought it was really boring and hard to go through and I'm ESL.

[Anonymous No.15435649]

>>15435609
The kindle was refuted by the bookwheel.

[Anonymous No.15435663]

>>15435645
yeah that's how instructional books are. Have you never heard of a text book?

[Anonymous No.15435671]

>>15435649
Based.

[Anonymous No.15435683]

>>15435092
>So bad a reading books, can't even get through 'How to Read a Book'.
Wew

[Anonymous No.15435690]

>>15435092
kek so this is the anon calling me a pseud

[Anonymous No.15435698]

>>15435663

I know, OP is the one who is complaining.

[Anonymous No.15435756]

>>15435092
Just skimread it, it's not supposed to be pored over

[Anonymous No.15435775]

>>15435092

There are summaries too. Probably better than not reading anything.

[Anonymous No.15436497]

>>15435092
The book itself tells you that your first reading of a book should be done quickly - to keep a constant pace, never pausing on the parts you don't understand. The purpose being to gain a broad understanding of the book as a whole. So do this with this book as well.

[Anonymous No.15436512]

>>15435092
Got you covered OP, see pic related

[Anonymous No.15436560]

>>15436512
Thank you (:

[Anonymous No.15436615]

>>15436512
That's nice, so in theory if I followed this and read every essential book that /lit/ suggested to me how long would it take?

[Anonymous No.15436638]

>>15436615

Don't do that. This place is full of trolls. Guys are posting cuneiform bs...

Get something from your favorite writer and do this a bit. It can be kinda boring too, if you didn't managed to read the book, dunno if you will be able to really do this thing. I honestly don't always feel like doing it even when I enjoy a book.

[Anonymous No.15436675]

>>15436638
although you don't have to take the unrealistic "lore of the world" approacho to read, say, Kant, but check it at least inspectionally if you feel interested. Otherwise starting with the greeks in greek is a meme

[Anonymous No.15436710]

>>15436638
>>15436615
I use this method primarily for STEM research (syntopical reading in particular), for which it is extremely effective when combined with a few other techniques, some partly of my own invention.

The method itself was intended for the study of philosophy and I suppose it must excel there too, though I've never attempted to apply it to that domain, as I have no interest in philosophy. I will say that the method rests on the first step, which acts as a filter to identify the books actually worth reading deeply. I'd say that 80-90% of books can be safely discarded at the inspection stage--it often doesn't even have anything to do the quality of the book itself, but rather with ones own interests or ability. Sometimes the time is not right to read a certain books, others have to be read first or certain life experiences are necessary to appreciate its wisdom.

The advice to summarize books in one line is surprisingly apt. Most books can only impart one line's worth of knowledge.

[Anonymous No.15436737]

>>15436710

His thing is legit, I used it on some books and I even got even better at remembering them. Did it with some psychology books and it worked for me.

[Anonymous No.15436771]

>>15435649
I like how he's waving at the engraver
>>15436512
Any more detail on how to write the notes in the second stage?

[Anonymous No.15436790]

>>15436771
I don't believe he elaborates much beyond what to take notes on, but I've since devised my own system which borrows (syntopically, if you will) from several other note-taking methods.

[Anonymous No.15436808]

>>15436790
And your, possibly syntopic, method is?
Summarize it in one line if applicable.

[Anonymous No.15437151]

>>15436808
In one line: Find isomorphisms between the abstractions of congruent mental representations and memorize them via repeated testing

[Anonymous No.15437214]

>>15437151
And how would you write that in pleb's English?
>In the general "shapes" of ideas, distilled to their simplest form, find where those shapes neatly overlap and match to other ideas and then challenge yourself again and again to repeat them perfectly?

I'm also more interested in how do you actually write the notes, as in what is the 'structure' of a note? If a book contains multiple worthy abstractions, do these each deserve a different note, or do you try to coalesce them together?

[Anonymous No.15437226]

http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/goodre.html
I really like this from Nabokov

[Anonymous No.15437362]

>>15437226
I like that bit about how the (neanderthal) boy who cried wolf was the first storyteller, not those who turned his demise into a moral

[Anonymous No.15437401]

>>15436675
L.Ron Hoyabembe

[Anonymous No.15437538]

Almost. You can divide the process into three parts:

1. Identify the explicit and latent abstractions. This is what Adler calls "the author's terms". I do research in CS and math so I prefer the term abstraction. But the word "definition" also fits, or "jargon" or "vocabulary" or "names". You might even generalize to the concept of language itself. e.g When Nabokov talks about the idea of the writer's "world" in one of his essays, he is partly talking about the abstractions that the author creates and then manipulates. These abstractions are extremely complex units of meaning (e.g characters can be considered a form of abstraction) and the good writer, in effect, communicates via an extremely rich and multifarious language, whose grammar is "story", and whose atoms are the ordinary language we are familiar with. In scientific or mathematical discourse (and perhaps also philosophical--though I'm not as familiar with it) things are simpler, abstractions map bijectively to meaning and are often orthogonal. At any rate, the first step in understanding anything is to "learn the language", list all the abstractions, the vocabulary, the terms, as well as their definitions in common speech, i.e "in your own words". Some of this work the author will do for you (again, in scientific literature, nearly all of it is done for you) some of it you will have to uncover yourself and will have to make up your own names for things.

2. Find an isomorphism to an existing mental representation. I guess you could simplify this to mere analogy, but I think it's a bit more subtle than that. What you're really looking for is some existing, familiar mental structure which perfectly (or in practice, approximately) captures both the gamut of abstractions as well as the connections between them. I like to think of this as the brain's natural means of data compression. If the approximating structures are personal or visceral, they are remembered more easily. If you wish to teach or demonstrate the representation however, it is better to use primitive structures (i.e structures universal to human experience). One primitive structure that I've found useful, is man himself. e.g to understand the "language" of Christianity, one might map its myriad abstractions to the character and body of Christ (the religion does this already, to an extent). If one wants to understand the history of ancient Egypt, he might use its pantheon of gods (which here, are made in man's image, for convenience) as the structure, assuming he is familiar with them. If he wants to learn auto-repair he might map the automobile's various parts to organs and tissues, etc. Obviously, you may have to do a lot of twisting to get things to map, but in practice this works well. The objective is to create a wireframe, or armature, upon which to hang all the abstractions so that all their interconnections can be understood at once and the structure itself can be easily manipulated and applied.

1/2

[Anonymous No.15437546]

>>15437538
3. Use repeated testing to memorize the mappings. Self-explanatory. I'm referring to using some kind of spaced repetition system to memorize the mappings until they become unconscious. In the neuroscience literature I believe this is called "chunking". It's analogous to auto-encoding in deep learning. Lately I've also been thinking about incorporating deliberate practice and decision trees into this step (so as to achieve the last and most tantalizing layers of Bloom's taxonomy: evaluation and synthesis), but I haven't come up with a good process for doing so yet.

For note-taking in particular, I borrow extensively from Adler and Wikipedia (its page structure, not the website itself). I use some software to maintain a personal wiki. The wiki is divided into pages, one for each topic. Each page is divided into three sections: a technical treatment, the isomorphism, and the references. The references are just straight links to the sources. The isomorphism section is written like a glossary and its items are gradually added to a spaced repetition software for long-term retention. I don't always include the isomorphism section. The technical treatment is specific to the type of information. For books that I haven't yet distilled into topics, I use Adler's method of summary, outline and argument. I generally don't do this for fiction, as I'm something of a philistine and just read for pleasure. For complex or long works (e.g War and Peace) I might have a running outline and dramatis personae. For works of personal significance I'll add my own commentary or go through the process described above. So, e.g Cicero's (or Aristotle's) "artistic proofs" in oratory, map to the human body as the head (logos), the heart (pathos) and the hands (ethos), and the five-part syllogism maps to the ears, the eyes, the nose, back to the eyes and finally the mouth (and the proofs connect to the divine trinity which connects to the Triple Goddess, etc.).

Perhaps it's not particularly elegant and too pedestrian and workmanlike for /lit/'s aesthetic sensibilities but I find the method works well for me.

[Anonymous No.15437680]

>>15436638
>>15436675
WHY do redditors call everything a meme? It isn't, what's so hard to understand.

[Anonymous No.15437706]

>>15437680
are you well versed in ancient greek?

[Anonymous No.15437789]

>>15437706
Πάνυ γε

[Anonymous No.15437942]

>>15435585
>lol it's so easy just don't read all of it
>like why even read any of it lol
>so easy

[Anonymous No.15438645]

>>15437942

Imagine being unable to differentiate easy from effortful. Easy in the sense that anyone can do. Doesn't have any pre-requisites to read it. But you still have to read the f book, there isn't a way to inject it.

Now get back to the shit hole you truly belong.

[Anonymous No.15440121]

>>15435092
I've read it and yes it is absolutely worth getting through, although I didn't find it very hard and its not long either so maybe you've been filtered

[Anonymous No.15440133]

>>15436710
great post

[Anonymous No.15440306]

>>15435092
it's a boring and badly written book but it's worth a read even if only once so just keep at it and try not to stop or dwell on the parts you don't really understand, there's a lot of good advice sprinkled throughout the book that you probably don't want to miss and the general method is worthwhile even if you only use it to determine books you wan to avoid, there's summaries of the book but none of them really do the method or justice but that might just be because the book isn't too easy to summarise, unfortunately it's one of those books where if you had the knowledge of having read the book prior to reading it you might have had more enjoyment out of it
a review of the book that I liked went along the lines of 'alder has written a book titled how to read a book, perhaps he should read a book titled how to write a book' but it might have been in reference to the first edition which was even worse by most accounts

[Anonymous No.15440967]

>>15438645
lol u mad
go back, redditspacer

[Anonymous No.15441591]

>>15440967
what's wrong with reddit?

[Anonymous No.15441746]

>>15435092
I'm sure you can find a youtube video with a girl with large breasts summarizing it to you

[Anonymous No.15441818]

>>15437538
>>15437546
Did you take the isomorphism idea from Ulysses? This actually seems like a good idea. Thank you!

[Anonymous No.15441937]

>>15440967
i space like that and i dont even go on reddit

[Anonymous No.15441955]

>>15441591
nothing, its better than 4chan nowadays

[Anonymous No.15441983]

>>15441955
Considering the gag they put around your mouth, no.

[Anonymous No.15442743]

>>15441818
Assuming you mean Ulysses the novel, no, I've never read it. I kind of just came up with it one day and upon trying it and seeing how effective it was, never looked back. I hope it helps you, and if it does, remember to pay it forward.

[Anonymous No.15443024]

>>15435092
it sounds pretty dumb. just read, man. the methods in this books sounds like they will kill all enjoyment from reading. maybe it's good if youre only reading a book to do a book report.
Would rather find a book on literary critique and analysis than this desu.