On Rereading as a Practice

The Encounter

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren wrote How to Read a Book in 1940, and revised it in 1972. It's a strange artifact — a book that insists most people don't know how to read, written in an era before screens made that claim feel prophetic. I picked it up because I realized I read constantly but retained almost nothing.

Going Deeper

The Four Levels

Adler's taxonomy is deceptively simple: elementary reading, inspectional reading, analytical reading, and syntopical reading. Most of us stop at level two. We skim, we absorb the gist, we move on. Analytical reading — where you genuinely argue with a book, outline its structure, identify its key terms — feels almost impossible in an age of infinite content.

But it's syntopical reading that fascinated me most. The idea that you read multiple books on the same subject simultaneously, creating a conversation between authors who never spoke to each other. This is what a university education is supposed to teach, and what most university educations fail to deliver.

Why Rereading Matters More Than Reading

The most radical idea in the book isn't about technique. It's the quiet insistence that a book worth reading once is worth reading again. And that the second reading is categorically different from the first. The first time, the book reads you — it reveals what you notice, what you skip, what confuses you. The second time, you read the book — you see its architecture, its choices, its gaps.

I tested this with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. First read: inspirational quotes, stoic vibes. Second read: a man desperately trying to convince himself to be good in a world that rewards cruelty. The same text, completely different book.

The Marginalia Question

Adler is famous for insisting you write in your books. Underline, annotate, argue in the margins. "A book is not a piece of furniture," he says. This felt like heresy to me — I grew up treating books as sacred objects. But once I started, I couldn't stop. My copies of books are now conversations with my past self. I open Sapiens and find a note from 2019 that says "really?" next to a passage I now completely agree with.

The margin is where reading becomes thinking. And thinking is where reading becomes yours.

Connections

Vladimir Nabokov said something similar in his Lectures on Literature: "One cannot read a book; one can only reread it." He meant that the first encounter is too overwhelming — you're lost in plot, in novelty, in the forward momentum of pages. Only on return can you see the whole.

This also connects to the concept of "deep work" that Cal Newport describes. Analytical reading is deep work applied to text. It requires the same conditions: sustained attention, no interruption, a willingness to be uncomfortable. Newport's framework explains why Adler's advice feels impossible for most modern readers — we've lost the infrastructure for depth.

Pushback

The book has blind spots the size of continents. It's entirely Western in its canon. It assumes a reader with unlimited time and access to a personal library. Its tone can be insufferably condescending — Adler sometimes reads like he's scolding you for not being Adler.

More importantly, the book doesn't account for the kind of reading that matters most in the 21st century: reading across media. How do you "analytically read" a podcast? A documentary? A Twitter thread that somehow changed your mind? The framework needs updating, even if the core insight doesn't.

What Remains

I now keep a reading journal — not summaries, but arguments. When I finish a book, I write down what I disagree with. If I can't find anything, I probably wasn't paying attention. Adler taught me that reading without resistance is just entertainment. And entertainment is fine, but it's not learning.