If you want to get more out of your book reading time, I’d highly recommend How To Read A Book to you. Check out my review here, and then check out some of the quotes I especially appreciated.
“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 to few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of our understanding.”
“Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not. And the books that are over your head weary you unless you can reach up to them and pull yourself up to their level. It is not the stretching that tires you, but the frustration of stretching unsuccessfully because you lack the skill to stretch effectively. To keep on reading actively, you must have not only the will to do so, but also the skill—the art that enables you to elevate yourself by mastering what at first sight seems to be beyond you.”
“Perhaps you were beginning to see how essential a part of reading it is to be perplexed and know it. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature. If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.”
“Many persons believe that they know how to read because they read at different speeds. But they pause and go slow over the wrong sentences. They pause over the sentences that interest them rather than the ones that puzzle them. Indeed, this is one of the greatest obstacles to reading a book that is not completely contemporary.”
“‘State in your own words!’ That suggests the best test we know for telling whether you have understood the proposition or propositions in the sentence. If, when you are asked to explain what the author means by a particular sentence, all you can do is repeat his very words, with some minor alterations in their order, you had better suspect that you do not know what he means. Ideally, you should be able to say the same thing in totally different words. The idea can, of course, be approximated in varying degrees. But if you cannot get away at all from the author’s words, it shows that only words have passed from him to you, not thought or knowledge. You know his words, not his mind. He was trying to communicate knowledge, and all you received was words.”
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Book Reviews From 2016
December 27, 2016 — Craig T. Owens#struggles
Alive
An Angel’s Story
Answering Jihad
Archeological Study Bible
Chase The Lion
Churchill’s Trial
Culture
Hope … The Best Of All Things
How To Read A Book
I Stand At The Door And Knock
Jesus Always
Letters To A Birmingham Jail
Light & Truth—Acts & The Larger Epistles
Light & Truth—Revelation
Light & Truth—The Lesser Epistles
More Than A Carpenter
Of Antichrist And His Ruin
On This Day
One Of The Few
Our Iceberg Is Melting
Shaken
So, Anyway…
Streams In The Desert
The American Patriot’s Almanac
The Bad Habits Of Jesus
The Beauty Of Intolerance
The Blessing Of Humility
The Dawn Of Indestructible Joy
The Duty Of Pastors
The Gospels Side-By-Side
The Mathematical Proof For Christianity
The Philosophy Of Sin
The Place Of Help
The Porn Circuit
The Psychology Of Redemption
The Seven Laws Of Love
The Shadow Of An Agony
The Tabernacle Of Israel
Think On These Things
Today’s Moment Of Truth
Useful Maxims
Your Sorrow Will Turn To Joy
Here are my book reviews for 2011.
Here are my book reviews for 2012.
Here are my book reviews for 2013.
Here are my book reviews for 2014.
Here are my book reviews for 2015.
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