How can I learn to ‘know’ when I’m reading a book

By Jody Smith | 10 February 2018 12:25:26A lot of us are still learning how to read and understand books, even though the vast majority of us can do it by simply asking the book. 

As an aspiring bookworm, though, I wanted to know what kinds of books you could actually learn to “know” by reading them, and how many of those books could I actually do without. 

So I got a friend to come up with a quiz.

I was going to do the same thing for all of the books that I read, but I wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible. 

To answer the questions, I looked for books that were “written with the intention of teaching you how to learn”. 

What’s more, what would I want from the books? 

In a nutshell, I would want to see a story, or a lesson, that would help me “know”, whether that was a narrative, or an action, or whatnot. 

The quiz would have to be about one of the following: – How many of the stories in the books I’m about to read are “books” in the sense that they are books about what they teach you? 

– What’s the difference between books that teach you something and books that actually teach you to know? 

The answers to these questions are as varied as the books themselves, and as interesting as the questions themselves. 

If I were to ask you to name a single book you can actually learn from, I think the list would be long and, frankly, very boring. 

In the end, I asked you to answer a series of questions that, if answered correctly, would yield a list of 10 books that you can learn from. 

But first, a disclaimer.

 This is an online quiz, not a book-learning test.

The quiz was run using the  Free Online Test of Knowledge.

I’m not sure if it was a mistake, or if I should have included the question that said “What’s the best book to learn from?” or if that’s the way the quiz was designed.

Regardless, you should expect to see lots of errors. 

This quiz has been produced by the  Oxford University Press  and is intended for people who are between the ages of 13 and 18, with an average of about 13 years of age.

You can download a copy here, or take it for a spin on your own. 

Thanks to my friend Jody for help with this, and thanks to The Oxford Online Book Club  for all their support. Read more