Ithaca Wang’s Reviews > How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading > Status Update

Four categories of the extrinsic aids to reading: relevant experiences, other books, commentaries and abstracts, and reference books.

Four Special Criteria for Points of Criticism rules for the third stage of Analytical Reading: Criticizing a Book as a Communication of Knowledge.

Three General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette rules for the third stage of Analytical Reading: Criticizing a Book as a Communication of Knowledge.

Other three for THE SECOND STAGE OF ANALYTICAL READING, OR RULES FOR FINDING WHAT A BOOK SAYS (INTERPRETING ITS CONTENTS ): Rule 6. Grasp the author's leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences. Rule 7. Know the author's arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences. Rule 8. FIND OUT WHAT THE AUTHOR'S SOLUTION ARE.

First rule for the second stage of analytical reading, RULE 5. FIND THE IMPORTANT WORDS AND THROUGH THEM COME TO TERMS WITH THE AUTHOR.

Three Other Analytical Reading Rules: Rule 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. Rule 3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. Rule 4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.

Analytical Reading Rule 1: You must know what kind of book you are reading, and you should know this as early in the process as possible, preferably before you begin to read.