 In the previous video we looked at the kind of book. Determining the kind of book is only the first step in analytic reading. The next part is determining what the book is about and determining the steps that the author takes. This is summarized in the rules of analytical reading. By following these rules and following them quickly using inspection reading you can estimate a book before a thorough reading. To carry on the analogy from the made in previous videos by following these rules you construct that map in that compass. Recall that in the last chapter we saw the first rule of analytic reading. You should scan to find out the kind of book you are reading. Rule 2 states that one should summarize what the book is about in a sentence or in as few sentences as possible. Rule 3 states that one should outline the major parts of the book ordering them to what the book is about and Rule 4 states that one should define the problem the author is trying to solve and the author's proposed solution. Well it's easy to dismiss these rules as obvious and to think you already do so. It's easy to dismiss them and think they're obvious but without really following them. To give yourself a test you may merely ask yourself how often you understand a book meaning that you understand what the author is trying to do and a good idea of how the author is trying to do it merely by skimming. In other words the book is not a mystery. You should be able to produce a snapshot of the book in about 5 minutes. Tops. If you're not getting a snapshot of the book in about 5 minutes you don't understand these rules. I'm starting with Rule 4 as opposed to Rule 2. I actually prefer to think of the unity of the book as the question that the author is trying to answer and the answer that the author provides. You shouldn't confuse the unity of the book with the subject of the book. The subject of the book was covered with Rule 1 we saw in a previous video. Well remember that the subject of the book is where you might find the book in the library. So for example history. The unity of the book or what we're considering to be the question that the author is trying to answer and what the author thinks is the answer is not the same thing as the subject. There can be lots of unities all within under one subject. So for instance history is the subject but there's lots of questions to answer and to ask within history. When did the American Revolution take place and why? Is one question. When did the French Revolution take place and why? Is another question. Yet both are within the subject of history. The question that the author is trying to answer and what the author thinks is the answer provides the unity of the book. This is the purpose of the book. Hence everything should really be directed towards everything in the book should really be directed towards answering this question. So at least as I see it in the case of non-fiction Rule 2 is fulfilled by Rule 4. The difficulty for the reader here is that authors very rarely explicitly state questions. I'm convinced that at least sometimes authors that have not explicitly stated the question even unto themselves. Consequently, authors sometimes write confused books. It's a common practice at least for non-fiction for the author to state a thesis and in principle anyway this thesis should be the answer to the question that the author is trying to answer. But merely providing the answer is not enough for Rule 4 however. Well you might wonder why. Well books without questions are really just collections of statements and statements that have no question have no unity. Well here's a collection of statements. This guy is sometimes blue. The oceans have fish. Two twice itself equals four. There are no cedar trees on the moon. The chemical composition of water is dihydrogen monoxide and the declaration of independence was signed in 1776. These facts have no unity. They don't even have the same subject. There's no question that the answer except for maybe something like what collection of sentences can Christopher conjure? Without a question there is no purpose to these facts so we need the question. Determinate the question can be difficult. There is no one-to-one relationship between questions and answers. You can say something true without answering a question. So suppose someone asks how many sides in a decagon. Another can answer dogs or mammals. The responder may say something true but has not answered the question. To push the point further, a single fact or a set of facts can answer different questions. Four can answer the question what is a square root of 16 and how many months have only 30 days? I would really like to spend more time on this, on this relationship between questions and answers but that's beyond the scope of this little video. Perhaps some other time. In short, Rule 2 states that one must simply provide the unity of the book. In my estimation, Rule 2 is best fulfilled by Rule 4. You find the question that the author is trying to answer and what the author thinks is the answer. Everything in the book should be directed towards answering that question. There are going to be differences with fiction. So for example, if you're stating the unity of a piece of literature, you'd probably in a matter of two to four sentences give an overview of the plot. And that would satisfy Rule 2 but not necessarily Rule 4. But since my speciality is philosophy and not literature, I'm going to let those experts talk about literature. Outlining can be intimidating to seem like a very long task. Don't let this stop you. It need not be a long task. When you first start skimming, you're attempting to fulfill Rules 1, 2, and 4 to find the subject, whether it's about the problem and the answer. But this is skimming over the whole book. To fulfill Rule 3, you skim with a more narrow focus. You start skimming broadly to find the steps, and then you skim within those steps to find the details. Well, this can be confusing. Maybe I can help explain. You don't have to know what the author is doing in order to know what the author thinks he or she is doing or what the author claims he or she is doing. You merely have to report what the author claims at this point. You can later read carefully to understand exactly what the author is doing. So suppose an author is trying to demonstrate that Kant's transcendental idealism heavily influenced Bertrand Russell's philosophy. You could simply write down both the question and the answer in your notes. The outline is how the author attempts to answer this question. Suppose that the author claims that he or she will demonstrate this through analogous conclusions between Kant and Russell. So while skimming, the reader finds the list of conclusions that are analogous between Kant and Russell, and then the reader need not understand transcendental idealism at this point, nor understand all of Russell's theory. The reader need not understand the various conclusions. All the reader needs to understand is that the author thinks this is what the author is doing. With these rules, you found the subject of the book, the problem the author intends to solve, the solution the author provides, and you even have figured out the steps for that solution. Keep in mind this is all through inspection of reading. Now, inspection of reading might be cursory, but these are also great steps in comprehension. When you fulfill these rules before you go through a thorough reading, you'll know where you're going. You will have constructed that compass. That's the unity of the book. You'll also know how the author gets there. That's the outline. All that's left is to simply walk the path. The chapters following this one attempt to demystify these steps as well.