Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading should be, in my opinion, required reading for all high schoolers, especially if they are planning to continue on to college. And for those of us who are out of school but pursuing lifelong learning and personal scholarship – now is a great time to add this book to the reading stack!
While I have read – and loved – Adler’s book, I wanted to introduce it to my teenager as she is now in her junior year of high school.
I mentioned in our Homeschool Curriculum post that we will be reading this book through slowly. For each chapter, I have put together several discussion questions.
My personal plan for our reading is to read each chapter separately and then come together in a “book club” format and discuss over coffee and snacks. I am affectionately calling our little book club the Mortimer Adler Fan Club.
My discussion questions could be incorporated into a written assignment, but I figure my student has enough written work she is juggling and would prefer a more casual discussion setting.
Each Chapter post will include a discussion of the chapter contents, and a printable of the discussion questions. These discussion questions are meant to guide the reader through each chapter, so I’ve included page numbers for each question as well.
I hope you will consider adding this book to your “Essential Reading” list for yourself and, if you are homeschooling, for your older teens as well.
Welcome to the Mortimer Adler Fan Club!
Here is the Table of Contents for How to Read a Book. Studying the Table of Contents of a book falls under the second level of reading – inspectional reading. Adler describes a book’s Table of Contents as a road map, giving us a feel for the book’ s structure and what to expect as the reader. Adler noted that having a detailed Table of Contents is a practice that has declined – an observation he made more than fifty years ago when this book was first published. But he stresses the value of reading through the Table of Contents and it is worth the effort to include the Table of Contents in our reading of books.
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