This is crucial. At its best, syntopical reading isn’t about collecting ideas, but about following your sense of meaning.
It’s really an act of humility: standing before a chorus of minds and listening long enough to catch the harmony hidden inside their disagreements.
When you read this way, you’re not trying to master books. You’re letting curiosity lead you toward what feels alive. Each author becomes part of a long conversation that’s been going on for centuries, and you start to notice where your own questions belong in it.
It’s slow work, but it changes how you see. Ideas stop being things you collect and start feeling like patterns you recognize. Inside yourself, and in the world around you.
Glad you brought Adler‘s book to the forefront here. I read it years ago and found it very helpful. However, his notions need to be expanded since books are no longer the most common form of reading that people encounter. Although some may howl that it’s books, books, books, and only books — and any other form of reading is to be deprecated! But that simply lives in the past, kicking against the goads… It’d be good and helpful to a brace of your readers if this substack could somehow grapple with the developing circumstance of reading. Or just ignore this comment …
Most interesting but I wonder if that's the best image to illustrate analytical reading. It's from Coppola's annotated version of the Godfather novel, so the comments are specifically plotting the book's scene as a film scene, rather than analysing the book per se.
I didn't know anything about Adler and this his teaching. Really, a new window opened inside my poor brain. I just downloaded and archived this article, to read and understand. I evan may try the four steps, as long as I don't falter along the way. Thank you!
This is crucial. At its best, syntopical reading isn’t about collecting ideas, but about following your sense of meaning.
It’s really an act of humility: standing before a chorus of minds and listening long enough to catch the harmony hidden inside their disagreements.
When you read this way, you’re not trying to master books. You’re letting curiosity lead you toward what feels alive. Each author becomes part of a long conversation that’s been going on for centuries, and you start to notice where your own questions belong in it.
It’s slow work, but it changes how you see. Ideas stop being things you collect and start feeling like patterns you recognize. Inside yourself, and in the world around you.
Glad you brought Adler‘s book to the forefront here. I read it years ago and found it very helpful. However, his notions need to be expanded since books are no longer the most common form of reading that people encounter. Although some may howl that it’s books, books, books, and only books — and any other form of reading is to be deprecated! But that simply lives in the past, kicking against the goads… It’d be good and helpful to a brace of your readers if this substack could somehow grapple with the developing circumstance of reading. Or just ignore this comment …
Most interesting but I wonder if that's the best image to illustrate analytical reading. It's from Coppola's annotated version of the Godfather novel, so the comments are specifically plotting the book's scene as a film scene, rather than analysing the book per se.
I didn't know anything about Adler and this his teaching. Really, a new window opened inside my poor brain. I just downloaded and archived this article, to read and understand. I evan may try the four steps, as long as I don't falter along the way. Thank you!