A person can read a book with their eyes open or with their eyes closed whichever way they choose they will still be reading. The important thing about what that person is reading is that they learn to understand the literature in their hands. Ironically I began reading Roger Shattuck's paper "How to Read a Book" by reading it and not understanding what he was trying to say. In reality what he was trying to say is that the most important thing about reading a book is comprehension. As I read it the second time I began to see myself reading the way Shattuck says not to read. The more I began to read the text the more I started to understand what Shattuck was trying to say.
             Mortimer J. Adler wrote a book in the 1940s named "How to Read a Book". Out of curiosity many people actually went to the store and purchased the book written by Adler. Adler simply teaches that you can tell what the book is going to be about just by looking at the outer shell of it. He believed that the whole of the book is read just by reading the cover and the title. Thus making the statement "judging a book by its cover" true to Adler and as Shattuck states the whole educational system. But to Shattuck and myself we feel that this statement is false and believe there is better ways to judge and read a book. Shattuck feels that just by reading the outside of the book you will never fully understand what the book is about. So, picking up a book off the shelf and reading the blurb on the back will never give you the full understanding of the book unless you take the time to actually read the book cover to cover.
             With years of investigation Shattuck has created three of the most important categories on how and why we read. First, Shattuck brings forward the category that we read for basic comprehension and understanding of words and sentences. Second, we read for literary response to the parts and the whole of th...