Adrian Buck’s Reviews > How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading > Status Update
Adrian Buck
is on page 91 of 442
"In fact, whatever your failures as a reader, the fault is usually in the book, for most books...are badly made books in the sense that their authors did not write them according to these rules." - this insistance on rules - rules for reading, rules for writing - is beginning to irritate. I agree that writing and reading are reciprocal, but the reciprocity lies in discovery not in the applications of rules.
— Jan 09, 2020 07:46AM
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Adrian’s Previous Updates
Adrian Buck
is on page 330 of 442
"Reading for information does not stretch your mind any more than reading for amusement" - both can stretch your mind, edutainment is my favourite youtube genre.
— Feb 29, 2020 08:06AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 321 of 442
"...it is a topical index to the set of books titled GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD" - and the marketing exercise is suddenly revealed.
— Feb 25, 2020 11:05AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 315 of 442
"The special quality that a syntopical analysis tries to acheive can, indeed, be summarized in the two words "dialectical objectivity". - ooOooh!
— Feb 25, 2020 11:04AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 310 of 442
"Syntopical reading, in short, is to a large extent an excercise in translation" - the treatment of translation here is one of the weakest aspects of the book.
— Feb 25, 2020 11:01AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 308 of 442
"In syntopical reading, it is you and your concerns that are primarily to be served, not the books that you read" - that was a bit raw; no "but of course you couldn't this without being able to read a book analytically...
— Feb 25, 2020 10:58AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 295 of 442
"We have seen how history is a mixture of fiction and science...we have had a great deal of experience with [this kind of mixture]. The situation in social science is quite different. Much social science is a mixture of science, philosophy, and history, often with some fiction thrown in for good measure."
— Feb 22, 2020 06:40AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 288 of 442
"There have been more books written about how to read Scripture than about all aspects of the art of reading all together."
— Feb 20, 2020 11:47AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 282 of 442
"The discovery you come to on your own will be much more valuable than someone else's ideas" - this evaluation of autodidactism is one of the 'controlling principles'' of "How to read a book", and it is not properly explored.
— Feb 20, 2020 11:44AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 273 of 442
"If we could build a telescope or microscope to examine the properties of existence, we should so, of course. But no such instruments are possible." - historically, science has pushed back the scope of philosophical inquiry, it will continue to do so.
— Feb 20, 2020 11:41AM
Adrian Buck
is on page 263 of 442
Wow, a whole new level philosophical sophistication - van Doren, not Adler?
— Feb 19, 2020 10:54AM
