Deep Reading Pt. 5: How To Build A Commonplace Book That Actually Works

Welcome to the finale of our Deep Reading series, and today we’ll address the final stage of reading from Mortimer Adler’s system: syntopical reading.

Again, if you haven’t read the earlier instalments, please return to part 1 for an overview, part 2 for elementary reading, part 3 for inspectional reading, and part 4 for analytical reading. This part, however, is the sweet reward at the end of our journey together in this series.

So, if you’re enjoying what you’ve read so far, consider upgrading to a paid Double-Shot subscription to access the entire Deep Reading letters, along with our popular writing series, Plain English. These letters are distilled from the last 10 years of my career, and your contribution allows me to keep putting out these long-form, serialised letters to open up the world of reading & writing to you.

Mortimer J. Adler’s Reading System pt. 5: Syntopical Reading

Let’s start with a quick recap from last week’s mega-article on analytical reading:

Once you’ve gathered the key propositions from a book, you’ll be able to construct a nice page of notes around its key concepts. However, for most people, these notes usually collect dust in a hard drive or are buried deep in a file cabinet.

See, most of the notes you’ve gathered in analytical reading are usually ineffective because you’re merely replicating the information from a book. However, if we want to internalise what we’ve read, we have to find a way to capture the shape of our thinking as it happens.  

This is where a commonplace book comes in. Adler called it a syntopicon in his system, where he encouraged readers to group their notes under distinct themes (e.g., love, death, morality, etc.) and compare different authors’ ideas around similar topics.

However, in my opinion, Adler’s system is overtly prescriptive, and its pedantic steps have put a lot of people off. So, in this post, we’re going to go off script a little and recommend a few ideas organisation system that has worked for me. This will hopefully kick you in the ass and inspire you to go create a system that works for you.

So, after spending 10 years building a career around dealing with ideas, I’ve discovered that all successful ideas organisation comes down to 2 frameworks: