How Should One Read a Book?

Essay: How Should One Read a Book? by Virginia Woolf

To read a novel is a difficult and complex art. You must be capable not only of great finesse of perception, but of great boldness of imagination if you are going to make use of all that the novelist--the great artist--gives to you. -Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf begins her essay How Should One Read a Book? with a disclaimer: There is no right way to read a book. In fact, she says,

The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

And so her main agenda, she makes it known, is only "to put forward a few ideas and suggestions."

Here are my reflections on her suggestions:

I. The first thing we must consider is our approach before we begin to read a book. 

Ask yourself, "What do I want from this book?" The answer is already there, or you would have never picked the book up. This question will reveal your intentions, which naturally pilot your reading. For example, if you're reading for encouragement, you will likely pay much more attention to things you find encouraging, and insufficient attention to the rest; if you're reading for a test, you'll read just as much as you need to do well on the test, and no more; and on and on. No matter what, your intentions will guide what you absorb and what you leave behind. It is important to address them beforehand. None of these are wrong - but there is a big difference in skimming through the book of proverbs for a little 'pick-me-up' and reading to understand it.

To get the most out of our reading, our answer ought to be "to understand". If we approach a book open-minded, eager to strain from the book everything that the book can give to us, and not imposing our own limitations for what we want to receive from the book, we will earn a far richer yield than we would have otherwise. As she says,

If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

II. Two stages of reading

A. Reading as a friend
Understanding must always precede judgment. We want to listen before we speak. Or as she puts it,

Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice.

In this process, usually the first read through a book, the object is to receive impressions as they are, with our hands open and preconceptions dropped; to strive for the utmost understanding of the work before us. You are the author's friend. You want to hear from them. You value what they say, as they say it.

B. Reading as a judge
Understanding is only completed by judgment: for better or worse.

We must pass judgment upon these multitudinous impressions; we must make of these fleeting shapes one that is hard and lasting. 

I recommend a second reading for this. Pieces of the work will fall into place now that they are understood in light of the whole work. The goal here is now to appraise: What was good? What was bad? How do the ideas expressed in it compare to those I know in others which are similar? etc. And we can ask more personal questions: So what? What have I learned? What implications does this have on me, my life, my goals, my morals, my day, the world? If we were immersed inside the book in the first stage, we have now emerged outside of it again--yet we have taken some of it with us.

This judgment is more difficult than understanding, as Woolf states,

To continue reading without the book before you, to hold one shadow-shape against another, to have read widely enough and with enough understanding to make such comparisons alive and illuminating--that is difficult; it is still more difficult to press further and say, "Not only is the book of this sort, but it is of this value; here it succeeds; this is bad; that is good." 

That is the goal to reading well--reading for understanding. Pleasure may excite for a moment; knowledge may carry us for some time; but the richness of life comes from understanding--and that changes a man or woman in their depths. If only more of us would put in the effort to strive, when approaching books and people, to understand them rather than seek from them what we want. A man who understands one book has gained more than he who has merely read a lot. A man who understands one man has gained more than he who merely knows many men. But unfortunately,

Yet few people ask from books what books can give us.

Instead, we tell books what we want from them.