After a Lifetime of Reading, Most Still Don't Know How

011. A Book That Teaches You How to Read

This is the most "meta" book among the fifty — a book that teaches you "how to read." Using it as the capstone after reading the other 49 feels especially meaningful.

How to Read a Book is Mortimer Adler's 1940 work (substantially revised in 1972). Adler was an American philosopher and editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

The book's premise is an uncomfortable assertion — most educated people don't actually "know how to read." They can recognize characters, finish a book, remember some content, but they have never truly "read" — never engaged in a deep dialogue with the book, never been genuinely changed by it.

Adler says — there are different levels of reading. Most people stay at the lowest level (acquiring information), while real reading is the highest level — a conversation with an author smarter than you, understanding him, questioning him, and ultimately having your mind elevated.

For an investor whose livelihood depends on "continuous learning" (remember my reason for reading these fifty books — to become a Munger-style "non-instrumental," cross-disciplinary investor), "how to read and learn effectively" is a fundamental meta-skill.

022. The Four Levels of Reading

Adler divides reading into four progressive levels:

Level 1: Elementary Reading — Being able to recognize words and understand the literal meaning of sentences. Elementary school level.

Level 2: Inspectional Reading — Quickly and systematically skimming a book to judge "what this book is about, whether it's worth deep reading, what its structure is." This is the ability to efficiently filter — in investing, it corresponds to quickly judging "whether this report / book / piece of information is worth going deep into."

Level 3: Analytical Reading — Deeply and thoroughly understanding a book. Grasping the author's core argument, structure of reasoning, key concepts, and then questioning and evaluating it (what is right, what is wrong, and how it is useful to you). This is true "deep reading."

Level 4: Syntopical Reading — Around a theme, reading multiple books simultaneously, comparing them, synthesizing them, and forming your own judgment. This is the highest level — not passively accepting a single book, but actively building your own understanding across books.

These four levels precisely correspond to an investor's complete "information processing" capability — using inspectional reading to quickly filter massive information, using analytical reading to deeply understand key materials, and using syntopical reading to synthesize across books to form your own independent judgment.

And the way I read these fifty books is itself "syntopical reading" — around the theme of "how to understand markets, the world, and human nature," reading dozens of books from different fields, comparing them (the "cross-book comparison" in each essay), and finally forming my own integrated judgment. This is exactly the highest level of reading Adler describes.

033. The Deepest Insight: Reading as Dialogue with the Author

Adler's deepest insight is that true reading is a dialogue with the author.

Low-level reading is passively receiving information — the author says something, and you memorize it. High-level reading is active dialogue — you understand the author's argument, then question it, evaluate it, debate with it, and finally decide "what I agree with, what I disagree with, and how it changes me."

Adler says — reading a good book should be like having a deep conversation with someone smarter than you. You must strive to understand him (don't rush to oppose), and only then are you qualified to evaluate him (based on true understanding).

This profoundly shaped the way I read these fifty books — I read each one not passively accepting, but in dialogue with the author. That's why every reading note has a section "where I differ from the author" — because true reading is not worship, but dialogue; not acceptance, but debate; not becoming a disciple, but becoming an opponent and a friend (remember in the Poor Charlie's essay I said "treat the master as an opponent, not a teacher").

For an investor, this "dialogic reading" is key — you read Buffett, Taleb, any master, not to imitate them (become a disciple), but to understand them, question them, and then form your own judgment that synthesizes the strengths of many and transcends any single source. Passively accepting any one master turns you into his shadow; dialoguing with all masters allows you to become yourself.

044. Where I Differ from Adler

First, his reverence for "classics" may underappreciate "broad exposure."

Adler strongly advocates deep reading of "great classics" (he edited Great Books of the Western World). Deep reading of classics is extremely valuable. But he relatively undervalues the value of broad, rapid exposure to a large number of ordinary materials. In investing, you need both deep reading of a few classics (understanding timeless wisdom) and quick digestion of a vast amount of current, not-so-classic information (earnings reports, news, industry dynamics). Adler's "deep reading of classics" framework is less helpful for the latter. Today's information environment requires a combination of "deep reading of classics + rapid filtering of massive information."

Second, it was written in an era of "information scarcity."

This book was written in 1940/1972 — an era when books and information were relatively scarce, requiring "reading every book thoroughly." But today is an age of information overload (remember Gleick — what's scarce is attention). The most important reading ability today may not be "how to read a book thoroughly," but "how to filter out what's worth reading from the flood of information and resist the temptation of massive noise." Adler's "deep reading" method is still valuable, but today we need to add the ability to "filter and resist in an age of information overload" — something his era didn't have to confront.

Third, it assumes "the deeper the better," with diminishing returns.

Adler advocates reading every book as deeply and thoroughly as possible. But not all books deserve thorough reading, nor does deeper reading always yield higher returns. For many books, "inspectional reading" (quickly skimming to grasp the core) is enough; deep reading wastes time. The ability to judge "which books deserve deep reading and which can be skimmed" is itself a key skill, and Adler's bias toward deep reading may cause people to spend too much on unworthy books. Drucker would remind us — first things first; reading should focus on the truly important few.

Fourth, it emphasizes "solitary reading" and neglects discussion and practice.

Adler's framework is mainly about deep dialogue between "one person and one book." But two other important channels of learning — discussing with others (collision of different perspectives) and testing in practice (verifying in the real world) — he touches on too little. For an investor, reading alone is not enough — you also need discussion with different perspectives (remember Wang Yangming said "innate knowledge" needs external verification) and testing what you read in real trades (remember "refining through action"). Bookish knowledge must be processed through discussion and practice before it truly becomes yours.

055. Adler vs. These Fifty Books: Method and Content

Adler's How to Read a Book and the other 49 books I read form a relationship of "method and content."

The other 49 are content — they gave me specific knowledge and wisdom about investing, markets, the world, and human nature. Adler's book is method — it teaches me "how to read and digest this content."

Without Adler's method, the content of those 49 books would likely have been passively and superficially "read" by me, leaving little behind. With Adler's method (analytical reading + syntopical reading + dialogic reading), those 49 books were truly "read into me" — understood, questioned, compared, synthesized, and ultimately transformed into my own cognition.

That's why I use Adler as the capstone of these fifty — it is the "meta-method" of this entire reading journey. It explains the way I read these fifty books: not passively accepting any one book, but dialoguing with each (the "where I differ" section in each essay); not reading each in isolation, but comparing and synthesizing across books (the "vs. another thinker" section in each essay); not to worship masters, but to form my own independent judgment that synthesizes the strengths of fifty thinkers.

066. The Final Word

Finishing these fifty books and capping them with How to Read a Book, my biggest takeaway is — the ultimate purpose of reading is not "how many books you've read," but "how much you've been changed."

Adler distinguishes two types of reading gains — acquiring information (knowing more facts) and increasing understanding (the way you see the world is transformed). The former is quantitative accumulation, the latter is qualitative elevation.

Most people's reading stays at "acquiring information" — after finishing a book, they know a few more things, but their way of seeing the world hasn't changed. Truly valuable reading is "increasing understanding" — after reading a book, some angle of your view of the world is permanently altered.

In reading these fifty books, I pursued the latter. For each one, I asked not "what information did it give me," but "how did it change the way I see markets, the world, and human nature." Taleb changed how I see risk, Shiller changed how I see bubbles, Wang Yangming changed how I see "knowing and doing," Durant changed how I see "long cycles"...

These fifty books are not fifty piles of information; they are fifty upgrades in how I see the world.

And what threaded them together and made them truly "enter me" is the kind of reading Adler taught — active, dialogic, questioning, cross-book synthesizing reading.

Adler has a sentence I take as my lifelong learning standard: "A good book can teach you about the world and also about yourself."

Reading these fifty books, I came to know both the world (markets, history, technology, human nature) and myself (my biases, my boundaries, what I truly believe).

And this is perhaps the most worthwhile thing an investor (and a human being) can do — through continuous dialogue with the finest minds, constantly upgrade the way you see the world and yourself.

Because in the end, investing is not about information (everyone has information) — it's about cognition (the depth and independence of how you see the world).

And cognition is read — using the method Adler taught, dialoguing with the best books, for a lifetime.