Analysis Of How To Mark A Book By Mortimer J. Adler

For example, the author said on page 356, “Ford, the man who in the early 1910s helped unleash the power of industrialism to revolutionize human relations, spent most of the rest of his life trying to put the genie back into the bottle...” The author provides enough evidence to proof his argument. For example: statistics, notes, footnotes, chronological and history events. The book is divided in three mainly parts called: “Many Thins Otherwise Inexplicable” “LORD FORD” “RUBBER ROUGE” and those parts are divided in chapters. At the end of the book there is an epilogue, notes, illustration credits and an Index. This book is organized and easy to read and understand. However, it is a litter longer. The author could say his ideas using less pages. The author uses a lot of example and some illustrations than helps to understand the

By “marking up a book”, Adler means to have a conversation with the author. To do so, one must actively read and make thoughtful annotations. Adler states, “Understanding is a two-way operation; learning doesn’t consist in being an empty receptacle” (Adler 19). With this, Adler makes the point that to fully understand what one is reading, one must slow down, read carefully, ask questions,

Whenever I read books, articles, etc. that I know I will be tested on or need to remember I make side notes and highlight. While reading I determine what I believe is most important. I pick out key terms, names, dates, and numbers. I might make side notes and summarize some things. I also like to highlight words or phrases I may be unsure of that I later look up the meaning so I have a better understanding of the text. After reading the essay, How to Mark A Book, by Mortimer J. Adler, my reading process isn't going to change much. I agree with Adler’s assertion that books are as much a part of your head or your heart. I believe this because people can learn a lot from things that they read. For example, you can learn about nature, different

a big component of reading is knowing the conventions, recognizing them, and anticipating the results

Reading Strategy Note: Unlike summary and paraphrase, which require close reading, for this discussion use the reading strategy of

To be an active reader is to be able to express yourself in the book one reads. Mortimer J. Adler argues in his article, “How to Mark a Book”, that to be an active reader, the reader needs to actually write in their book; but also to fully claim ownership of their book. According to Adler, there are plenty of ways one can mark in a book; underlining, vertical lines at the margin, asterisk, numbers in the margin, circling or highlighting, writing in the margin at the bottom or top, etc. One does not initially understand what they are reading, until they feel like they are having a conversation with the author. Adler emphasizes marking in a book keeps the reader mentally awake, helps their thoughts become more alive, and also remember later what

Writing 80-100 page books by hand would be so exhausting. John is strong willed and so dedicated to making sure he gets all the material. That he will sit down and hand write textbooks.“ I spent a lot of time hand-copying the library books, so I could read them at my hut” ( 155). John does not just study what’s on the test, he studies all of it. He wants to learn all the information not just some of

When people read they often just skim through, “Although there are virtues to skimming, the vast majority of writing tasks you will encounter in college and in the workplace require your conversancy with material you have read.” (David Rosenwasser, of Home from Nowhere:Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-first Century, as Rosenwasser defines, become conversant 107).

Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst – Notice and Note introduces six “signposts” that alert readers to significant moments in a literary work. It encourages students to read closely and enables the reader to explore the text at a deeper level, by finding evidence from the text to support their interpretations. Using this Notice and Note method allows students to become more responsible, independent readers. This book is available for purchase in many different stores or online, at websites such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

In Tim Parks’ essay, A Weapon for Readers, Tim Parks explains that we as readers understand better when we are writing with a utensil in our hands annotating on every page of the literature we are reading. Parks firmly believes that annotating in literature brings a huge advantage to the reader understanding of the language and concept of the piece. Tim first saw a difference when it was brought to his attention that his students could not differentiate the original text from the translation. Park led his students to be more careful and attentive to their reading by instructing them to mark every page with a comment, question, or highlight something they enjoyed or hated. The pen became his strategy to encourage his students to change their

Growing up, writing and marking in any book was frowned upon and thought of as disrespectful. It was like damaging property, but after reading Mortimer Alder’s essay, “How to Mark a Book,” my thoughts have definitely changed. Alder discusses many things, such as, the three different types of book owners, different ways to mark up a book, and why is writing in a book necessary. Everything he mentioned really stuck with me and I am glad to have read this essay.

After reading the article, “Read like a Graduate Student, not a Mystery Fan” by Doane (2008), I realized that my notion of proper reading is incorrect. Although, from time to time, I tend to read the back and introduction of a book prior to reading or purchasing it, I never considered that particular method to be an effective reading method. Nonetheless, this specific article has provided me with interesting tools, that can enhance my reading process. Surprisingly, the information presented in the article makes perfect sense. For instance, I can see how knowing the outcome prior to reading the book can intensify one’s comprehension of the events leading to the conclusion or ultimate outcome (Doane, 2008).

Marking the useful quotes and some important events can also help me to understand and analyze books. For example, in ESL 827, I had learned summarize the book. I recorded the course of events of the book, but it was too general because I did not add my feeling in it. I could say that I just finished reading the book and known what happened to characters but understood a little. In contrast, After I read The Pact in ESL 828, I can see the causal relationship of the book; furthermore, I can ask myself why it happened and how they changed.

“How to Mark a Book” is an article that is intended to persuade the reader to make notes books to better understand the material and to read more actively. This is a very valid stance when the reader has to read a book as part of an assignment, but taking notes is utterly useless unless the reader thoroughly enjoys taking notes in his or her book. The author utilizes philosophical evidence that does not connect with logical thinking of most people. The author defines “full ownership” in terms of making the book a part of yourself. At the end of the day, a book is a book, and the author wastes too much time trying to explain this frivolous concept.

This summer, and again in class, we read the articles The Cost of Survival, The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt, and Unbroken. Over the summer, I just read the texts on a literal level and the only text-marking that I did was I highlighted important parts and summarized each paragraph. I didn’t even begin to look into what else the author could possibly mean other than what he/she said on the page. Although, when we re-read and text-marked these articles, I did something very different. I looked into the deeper meaning of what the characters, word choice and plot that the author chose to use, means and what new ideas that they brought to the text by reading each paragraph carefully and questioning why the author did certain things that brought me to something that I had never found before. The difference between the two is that in the first read is that I didn’t fully understand the text. I just wrote summaries on the side of the piece. I didn’t have any idea of what any different meaning was than the obvious meaning. In my second read I found and understood deeper