Recommendations you can check.
by Mortimer J. Adler, 1972
Who uses, recommends or left How to Read a Book, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
3 people
This book convinced me that while skimming was perhaps useful for mining information, it would never be a viable path to rigor. Adler advocates a disciplined and deep reading of challenging books.
An essay giving a friend, and later many others, a sequenced list of eight books to build a foundational understanding of society.
2019-05-14·samoburja.com ↗
I had some high hopes for this book, but I'm not sure I liked it that much.
His year-end post listing and reviewing every book and magazine he finished in 2025.
2025-12-26·arslan.io ↗
Rough Notes. A very meta book with some serious advice on how to read books well. Frustratingly long for its content, though.
On his public list of books he has read, with his notes.
2017-01-01·radex.io ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.