"How to Read a Book" (supposedly)

So my second semester of school involves the course Critical Thinking, in which I'm required to read a book called How to Read a Book. I'm just going to quote it here.

There are four main questions you must ask about any book. 

 1. What is the book about as a whole? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics. 

 2. What is being said in detail, and how? You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author's particular message. 

 3. Is the book true, in whole or part? You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two. You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not. When you understand a book, however, you are obligated, if you are reading seriously, to make up your own mind. Knowing the author's mind is not enough.

 4. What of it? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them? And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further enlightenment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested.

[lala insert paragraph you don't need]

The four questions stated above summarize the whole obligation of a reader.  

 Well then. Evidently this book is trying to tell me what my purpose in reading is. ._. I do not exactly appreciate having any purpose of mine defined for me, so: No thank you.

That aside, though, this book has promise. XD I think. In all honesty, I'm intrigued by this course because I'm hoping it'll help me better analyze the things I read and from there give more in-depth opinions about them. That, honestly, is why I pay attention to themes and the like when I read: because I want to tell people my observations. I don't know whether that comes from the urge to show others how observant I can (sometimes) be or the urge to have intelligent discussions or something else or all of that, but eh. I can figure out the reasons later. My point is that I'm not taking kindly to this book's attempt to compromise my motivations, regardless of whether the motivations are similar enough or whether the book is right. It's got my skepticism now, so if I end up agreeing it'll be of my own free will, thank you very much.

(Also, I'm really tempted to go into detail about the punctuation errors in the above passage. Now I just wonder whether they're there due to the author's inexperience or due to being written decades ago. Situations like this frustrate me. I don't like when I can't figure out whether the author had an excuse for these errors. >.<)

ANYWAY. Books are cool. I'm reading Eldest right now, or rather, reading the whole of the Inheritance series; I've already read Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr, but that was years ago, and I wasn't making any analyses about their content, so I decided to reread them before continuing on to Inheritance. On top of that, the fact that it's been years since I read them means that I'll be missing out on a lot of tiny details, and I've realized after lots of time in discussion forums that a lot of the supposedly irrelevant details in these books may actually be brilliant examples of foreshadowing. I'd hate for the effect to be lost on me, so there's another good reason for me to go back and reread them.

I haven't regretted it so far; I've already noticed several little things that I wouldn't have even thought about previously. XD For example, in the end of one of Eldest's chapters, I observed that Eragon and Arya have some really distinct personality differences. When I was reading Eragon, I did my best to make guesses at the major characters' Myers-Jung personality types and decided that Eragon was an extrovert and Arya was an introvert, primarily due to how they express themselves: Eragon is heavily talkative while Arya only speaks occasionally. Even though extroversion doesn't necessarily mean a person is talkative, and introversion doesn't mean a person rarely speaks, those traits often are marks of their respective personality elements, so I based it off of that without too much further thought. So at the end of that chapter in Eldest, I noticed something interesting: When Arya seemed upset, Eragon's first thought was that she might find company comforting, but he was shocked to find that she seemed to not mind solitude. I was amazed by that; I was intrigued to find their previously theoretical extroversion and introversion being expressed so obviously. I promptly became convinced that Christopher Paolini is very good at giving his characters concrete personalities. XD

On the other hand, I had a problem with their manners of speech. Maybe there were mild differences that I didn't notice, but for the most part it seemed like everyone spoke exactly the same way: with Christopher Paolini's expansive vocabulary and directness of speech.

I pin the vocabulary and to-the-point nature of speaking on Christopher because that's basically the way the entirety of the books are narrated. On every page there's at least one or two words that I'm unfamiliar with or can't use myself, and he doesn't really bandy about; it's extremely impressive. However, I really don't like that all the characters talk with the same style. XD Eragon and Roran grew up in a small village, living on and maintaining their uncle's farm; they received no pompous education and didn't even know how to read. It's beyond me how they could reasonably be expected to have the level of vocabulary that Christopher gave them. If it were only the more noble and wise characters like Arya and Saphira who had this vocabulary, it wouldn't have been as much of a problem to me, but I felt like the story could've been enhanced if Christopher had kept this in mind. To be fair, though, I have no clue how difficult such a thing would be and have never attempted it before, so maybe he had an excuse, but, to quote the movies: "I expected more . . . well, more."

That's really only one small complaint of mine out of numerous things I love about the books. I love how much detail there is; some might find it tedious, but I just find it another impressive indication of Christopher's intelligence and the amount of effort he put into making these books realistic. :3 I love the fact that there's dragons. I love that so much thought is put into the different languages the characters speak (and sort of aspire to make my own language now); I've become fascinated with language in general as of late, so it was so interesting to experience the difference between the "normal language" and that of the elves. I love the cultural differences, too, and how obvious it becomes that Eragon and Saphira and Arya are all different species. The elves' culture also really reminded me of Japan because they attach honorifics to names (like, they have elda in place of sama and ebrithil instead of sensei and I so love it <3), and the elves attach a lot of weight to diplomacy and gestures of courtesy as methods of holding peace.

Plus, elves sorta look like Asians, right? :D Riiiiiight?
Well. Okay. Maybe not. But I still really enjoy noticing these little similarities.

Anyway though, I really need to keep reading How to Read a Book. They're about to tell me about the various ways to "mark books" to "make them my own"—in other words, they're about to tell me to do that which I've never dared to do and actually highlight and underline and scribble in the margins and asdfghjkl. o.o To be honest, I have wondered what it would be like to try this, but at the same time, it seems like it'd ruin the experience for me to write in these books. What if I want to read it later with a fresh mind and not have to worry about the notes I made previously? Or what if I want to sell it or pass it on to somebody? I couldn't do that in good conscience knowing how irritated I am to find that used books I purchase contain past readers' annotations. Maybe it could be a good experience, though—in all fairness, I guess I should try it at least once before dismissing it. But when I attempt it, it's sure not going to be in one of my favorite books unless I have a spare copy. XD

And until I do attempt it, I think I'll be quite fine with keeping my thoughts on the internet or inserting them into conversations or writing them down in journals.

Lol I write long blogs.

Onward to reading! :3