The above principles apply generally to all books, in particular expository books. This section treats different genres and guides on how to adjust the four key questions:
- What is this book about as a whole?
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- Is the book true, in whole or part?
- What of it? Why is this important? What follows?
We’ll cover practical books, imaginative literature, history, math and science, philosophy, and social sciences.
Practical Books
Practical books concern how to do things better. They can be mainly a book of rules (like a cookbook) or a set of principles that generate rules (like The Wealth of Nations), or somewhere in between.
The practical book itself can never solve its targeted problems directly. It requires action on the reader’s part.
Because the book is a means to an end, you must decide whether you agree with the author’s end. If you don’t believe in economic justice, then you’ll disagree with Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, no matter the quality of the means.
Note that practical books are not purely theoretical emotionless treatments, like math proofs are. To be effective, they contain rhetoric or propaganda that appeal to the heart as well as the mind.
- Be wary of separating the arguments from the oratory “emotive use of words.”
- But don’t be completely resistant - weigh the appeals and open yourself accordingly.
Understand the context of the author. Know something about the author’s life and times, and how it affected the problems she saw and the rules she espouses.
- For Leviathan, Hobbes lived in the English civil wars and was distressed by social disorder.
- For The Prince, know the Italian political situation and Machiavelli’s relation to the Medicis.
The Four Questions:
- What is this book about as a whole?
- What problems are being addressed?
- Discover the rules that are being recommended.
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- Discover the principles that justify the rules.
- Find the applications of the rules to concrete cases.
- Is the book true, in whole or part?
- Does the rule actually work?
- Do you desire the end that the rule guides to?
- What of it? Why is this important? What follows?
- If you agree with the book’s means and end, then you are obligated to put the means to action. Not doing so is not a sign of laziness; it’s a sign that you don’t fully agree.
- Figure out how the rules should be applied in practice.
Imaginative Literature
Most of the principles so far apply to expository writing, where the aim is to convey information or lead to action. The goal of imaginative literature is different: to convey an experience. A work of fine art is “fine” because it is an end in itself.
Thus, as a reader you should open yourself to being emotionally affected - don’t resist the effect. Allow it to move you. Likewise, don’t criticize imaginative writing until you appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience.
Where expository writing defines its terms with explicit precision, imaginative works deal in ambiguity. Having multiple meanings enhances the richness of a set of words.
Imaginative works are judged by how well they reflect reality. Not necessarily in verisimilitude (as science fiction or fantasy violate) but rather whether what is being said rings true - characterization, how characters respond to events, whether themes are revealed that reflect your experiences.
Reading imaginative works should still be active and critical. When you say you like or dislike a fictional work, you should articulate why, and what is good or bad about the book.
Imaginative works don’t contain explicit terms, propositions and arguments, but the analogy works:
- The terms are the set pieces: the setting, the characters, and the events.
- The terms are connected in propositions: the characters live and breathe in the world.
- The arguments are the interaction between the propositions: how the characters respond to events.
The analogy breaks down on inspection, but the purpose of this reasoning is to enhance your pleasure by understanding why you like something.
The Four Questions:
- What is this book about as a whole?
- Summarize the plot of the book in a few sentences.
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- What are the elements of the work - its setting, characters (and their thoughts and actions), events?
- What is the shape of the plot, to climax and aftermath?
- Is the book true, in whole or part?
- Do the characters behave realistically?
- What have you learned from the experience?
- What of it? Why is this important? What follows?
- Does it satisfy your heart and mind? Do you appreciate the beauty of the work?
Specific advice for types of imaginative literature
Stories/Novels
- Stories are universally enjoyed - the authors suspect this is because it serves our unconscious needs.
- Readers live out fantasies in the characters - passionate love, empire construction, overcoming struggle.
- People crave a feeling of order and justice. In contrast, in stories considered bad, people seem to be punished or rewarded with no rhyme or reason.
- The great books tend to satisfy the deep unconscious needs of almost everybody.
- Read it quickly with total immersion, ideally in one sitting. Don’t draw it out just to savor it, since this is indulging your unconscious feelings about it.Don’t disapprove
- Suspend your disbelief about events. Don’t disapprove of something a character does before you understand why he does it. And don’t judge the world until you’ve lived in it to the extent of your ability.
- If the book has a lot of characters, don’t worry about knowing them all. This is just like moving to a new town. The important ones will keep resurfacing.
- Once the story ends, it ends. Your imagination of what the characters do afterward is meaningless.
Plays
- Most plays are not complete when read, since they’re meant to be performed on the stage. They lack stage direction.
- Pretend that you’re directing the play. Instruct the actors on where to stand, where to face, and how to say their lines. Tell them the importance of certain lines.
- Some lines of plays are ambiguous - how you choose to act will affect the interpretation of the scene.
- eg Shakespeare’s Hamlet has a scene where Hamlet’s line “ha, ha! Are you honest?” could be construed as him knowing his father is listening to him, or not.
- When confused by a line, say it aloud and with meaning - this will clarify many a line without having to consult a dictionary.
- In tragedies (eg Aeschylus), the essence of tragedy is time, or the lack of it. There is no problem in Greek tragedy that couldn’t have been solved with more time. We see what should have been done, but would we have been able to see it in time?
Poetry
- Poetry is a spontaneous overflowing of the personality. Defining what constitutes poetry is difficult, but you know it when you see it.
- Read it through without stopping and trying too hard to understand every single line. The essence of a poem is never in the first line, but rather in the whole.
- Then read it aloud. You’ll pick up on new insights.
- Most poems are about a conflict, even if it’s not explicitly stated (eg love vs time, life and death, transience vs eternity)
- Poems often stand alone. Don’t feel you have to know about the author and the times.
- Read great poetry over a lifetime - you’ll discover new things about it.
History
According to the authors, history has a greater impact on people’s actions today than any other type of work. Philosophical ideals and utopias reveal only the sad difference with today’s state. History shows the actions of people in the past, making it less imposing for you to repeat them (in the case of good achievements) or avoid their mistakes.
The way to read history is not just to learn what happened, but also to learn the way people act in all times and places, especially now.
Accuracy is always an issue in historical works. It’s hard enough in a modern day court to prove that anything happened, with live witnesses. Historical works try to establish that something happened in the past with no live witnesses to question. Historians must infer what happened from source material, and often have to impose patterns and infer motivations.
Therefore, you should always be wary of what is written:
- What does the author want to prove?
- Whom does she want to convince?
- What special knowledge does she assume?
- What special language does she use?
- Does she really know what she is talking about?
It’s necessary to read more than one account of the history of an event if we want to understand it. This is all the more important if the event has practical significance for us (like the Civil War).
The Four Questions
- What is this book about as a whole?
- Know the limited scope of the work. A history of the Civil War is not a history of the world in the 19th century.
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- Is the work divided into chapters that correspond to years, or is it divided by subject (economics in one, wars in another)?
- Which of these is most important to the author?
- Is the book true, in whole or part?
- Did the historian misunderstand the sources, perhaps because of deficiency in her grasp of human nature?
- For example, earlier historians may not have sufficiently discussed economic matters and self-interest in their works.
- Did the historian misuse sources, or omit key sources?
- What of it? Why is this important? What follows?
- Does it satisfy your heart and mind? Do you appreciate the beauty of the work?
Of different types of historical works
Biographies
- The definitive biography is usually written after several other biographies have been written.
- Autobiographies and authorized biographies (where the subject (or her estate) gives exclusive right to private materials) should be assumed to be biased. The subjects have incentive to hide the negative and embellish the positive - this is the way her friends want the subject to be known to the world.
Current Events
- We can’t be sure that we’re getting at the facts.
- Whom is the work written for? If it’s intended for a group that already agrees with the author, you may find it frustrating if you are outside the group.
- Since these primarily convey information, you need not perform the full analysis. But you should continue asking the critical questions.
- When reading digests of news, be wary of what is left out.
Math and Science
Historical math and science works tend to be more accessible than people think because 1) historically, they were written for broad readership; 2) they tend to clarify upfront their terms and propositions.
Modern works tend to be written by experts for experts for reasons of expediency, since fields have become deeply specialized. Thus they contain jargon and require prior training. The techniques in this book don’t apply as well in these cases.
When reading math, remember that math is a language like any other, with its own conventions and grammar. It is in fact easier to understand than most languages, since it is not spoken and there are no emotional connotations. Treat it like this and it will become less inscrutable.
When reading science, the goal is not just to absorb the scientific laws and hypotheses, but more broadly to understand the history and philosophy of science. The scientific problem is to describe the phenomena as accurately as possible, and to interconnect different kinds of phenomena.
The Four Questions:
- What is this book about as a whole?
- State as clearly as you can the problem the author has tried to solve.
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- What experimental data are required to believe the arguments? They are likely outside the realm of your experience.
- What assumptions are required to form the propositions?
- Is the book true, in whole or part?
- What of it? Why is this important? What follows?
- Theoretical conclusions can have important practical consequences (eg on climate change).
Philosophy
Philosophical works discuss the kinds of questions that children ask - broadly:
- Theoretical/speculative: what is or what happens
- Metaphysics: about being or existence
- Nature: about becoming and changes
- Epistemology: about knowledge, its causes and limits
- Practical/normative: what should be done
- Ethics: right vs wrong
- Politics: good society and the individual in relation to the community
The questions are varied and deep.
- On existence: What is the difference between existing and not existing? What are properties of all things that exist, and those of things that do not? Are there different modes of existence? Does everything exist physically, or do some things exist non-materially? And so on.
- Note that not all questions asked by philosophers were philosophical - like the composition of terrestrial vs celestial bodies.
Unlike kids who endlessly ask questions, adults lose this curiosity at some point in development. Philosophers help evoke the questions again.
Up until 1930, philosophical books were written for the general reader.
Unlike science, which often requires external data, philosophy deals with questions that can be answered entirely within the mind. There is nothing to do but think.
Philosophical works occur in various forms: 1) dialogues (like Plato); 2) essays written straightforwardly (like Aristotle); 3) meeting of objections, first giving the wrong answer then countering (like Aquinas); 4) systemization, formalizing in mathematical form (Descartes); 5) aphorisms, containing pithy statements requiring heavy lifting by the reader (like Nietzsche).
On theological works: treat the dogma with the same respect you treat assumptions of a mathematician. Take the assumptions to be true, then see what arguments and conclusions result. Do not discard the entire work, assuming the arguments are as dogmatic as the assumptions.
The Four Questions:
- What is this book about as a whole?
- State the questions the work tries to answer.
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- Discover the controlling principles of the author.
- Plato assumed that conversation about philosophy is the most important of all human activities.
- Aristotle believed that happiness is the whole of the good, not the highest good.
- Define the terms: they often come from common speech but are used in a very special sense.
- Is the book true, in whole or part?
- You must answer the important questions for yourself, with arguments to back them up. Taking the opinions of others is not solving the questions, but evading them.
- What of it? Why is this important? What follows?
- Theoretical conclusions can have important practical consequences.
Social Sciences
This group includes economics, politics, sociology, psychology, and possibly those of professional trades (law, business).
Social sciences are deceptively easy to read, since they use jargon that has penetrated daily life - words like “society,” “culture,” “gross national product.” The topics relate to your everyday experience. However, for this reason you likely come in with preexisting bias, which must be ignored to read analytically.
Furthermore, unlike science works, social science works tend not to define the essential terms and postulates. This is aggravated by the blending together of multiple fields, thus creating a struggle to define terms like “economic depression” as clearly as “isosceles triangle.”
Typically there is no single authoritative work on any subject, so you must read several. One sign of this is the need for social science authors to release revised editions of their works to avoid obsolescence.
Speaking of multiple works, this brings us to the final section of the book, on syntopical reading.