How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading

by Mortimer J. Adler

Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good. But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed.

We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few.

It is noteworthy that the pitcher and catcher are successful only to the extent that they cooperate. The relation of writer and reader is similar. The writer isn’t trying not to be caught, although it sometimes seems so. Successful communication occurs in any case where what the writer wanted to have received finds its way into the reader’s possession. The writer’s skill and the reader’s skill converge upon a common end.

any book that can be read for understanding or information can probably be read for entertainment as well, just as a book that is capable of increasing our understanding can also be read purely for the information it contains. (This proposition cannot be reversed: it is not true that every book that can be read for entertainment can also be read for understanding.)

This feels like a narrow view of what fiction is capable of to humanity. There is a great deal of worth in the stories we tell fiction can be read like this