Reading On The Run, Continuum Reading Concepts

I love Robert Clinton's "Continuum Reading Concept", and I introduce them to my own students, fortified with Mortimer Adler's 4 levels of reading (which approximate but do not actually correspond with Clinton's continuum) and a dash of classical trivium.Ironically, some readers will find this little book of Clinton's almost as frustrating as that big book of Adler's ( How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading ). Both can be difficult to read: Adler's goes into great and pedantic detail, while Clinton's is still mostly in outline form, simply written and cavalierly edited, if it was edited at all.For those who are interested, I have developed an Academic Reading Seminar that conveys the gist of both books in a far more accessible manner. It can be scaled to fit your desired depth of mastery: you get a solid introduction in 2 hours, broader understanding and valuable exercises in 4 hours, and a deep synthesis of both books plus enough practice to master their skills in the 6 hour version of the seminar.The best of Reading On The Run is Clinton's practical and efficient strategies for reading a book "merely well enough": Scan, Ransack, Browse and Pre-Read. His description of In-Depth and Study reading is just a summarizing and simplifying of Adler's "Analytical" reading, and Clinton admits as much. But the most powerful advice Clinton gives is tacked on at the end almost as an afterthought: "Buddy Reading". This idea deserves a book of its own. I hope Clinton's grad students will convince him to write it... or even take on the project themselves, with his oversight. Clinton's prose and rigor might both benefit, if they did.Please take my criticisms of Clinton's writing style with a grain of salt. I am a copyeditor as well as a tutor of English composition and cannot help seeing every flaw (yes, my own too). But Clinton approaches his writing with the same pragmatism and efficiency with which he coaches us to approach reading: "good enough" is good enough. And in the late 1990s, Clinton espoused an approach to academic writing which he and others at Fuller called "information mapping"-- this book is an example of that writing style. According to the philosophy of that style, it is indeed "well-written", although I do wish he had mapped out his information in deeper detail. It is that lack alone, not the writing style, that knocks the fifth star off my rating.All in all, this is a must-have for anyone intimidated by the amount of reading they face, and this is one book that will NOT take a long time to read!

Clinton provided me with a vocabulary, and the permission, to read books at different levels, without having to read every word – Scan reading, Ransack reading, Browse reading, Pre-Reading, and In-Depth reading. He also introduces the value of studying basal books and Buddy reading. Having read Mortimer Adler’s book “How to Read a Book” years ago, and realizing that if I followed his model fully that I’d never finish reading one book in my lifetime, I liked Clinton’s reading guideposts in a world where more and more books are always being published.

Since there is no way to stay on top of everthing you want to read. This book gave me a framework for reading and understanding large amounts of data. Get it, I dont know how I would make it through grad school without it. Reading on the Run, Continuum Reading Concepts