Rhetorical analysis of How to Mark a Book - Essay Example

How to Mark a Book: Rhetorical Analysis Mortimer Adler was an who wrote several books related to philosophy, and he also served as an editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica. He was the pioneer of the Great Books program, a propagator of the classics. His association with books is unmatchable, and to share his passion for reading, he has written the article “How to Mark a Book”. The gist of this article is to make readers understand the importance of writing between the lines. While introducing the subject under discussion, he offers a classification of book owners.

According to Adler, there are three types of book owners. The first category includes people who are fascinated by the exterior or superficial outlook of the books; the second category includes people, who collect a lot of books, yet they are partially aware of what is in their collection; and the third category belongs to those who own books as they are supposed to be owned. Adler emphasizes on the importance of the essence and the knowledge that is preserved in the books, and his third type of book owners have this habit of reaching to crux of the information that is locked in words.

The author has compared reading books with consuming beef steaks. According to him one must not read through the books, like gulping food hastily. Rather a reader must read and digest every point in the book, like he is chewing and digesting a tasty meal. Further, he gives example of President Hutchins, who was according to him a learned person with the passion of reading. While quoting Hutchins case, the author tries to elaborate the importance of writing on books, and on margins on the printed pages.

Adler admits that writing, while reading a book may be a laborious act, and it definitely consumes more time than just simply reading, but he says that this is actually how one can give respect to the ideas that are documented in book. However, he does not want the readers to condition reading with labor, he appreciates the relaxed mode reading of fiction and other easy to digest literature. Further, he suggests that consuming few books properly is better than reading through a library, and he compares it with human sociology, where he suggests that it is better to have few friends than having thousands of acquaintances.

To encourage his readers for adopting the habit of writing through lines, he has offered a hypothetical protocol that could be used by the readers, when they start reading their next book. Overall the main theme of this article was to make readers learn how to extract the maximum out of a book. Adler has offered a great deal of information in regards to marking a book. He has used skills as an author to advocate his proposal, and his article “How to Mark a Book”, is definitely intriguing, and useful for the people who want to grab maximum knowledge.