Saber leer. (How To Read)

The last book in the trilogy that started with Saber escribir ("How To Write") and Saber hablar ("How To Read") brings attention to the processes involved in the act of reading and details strategies to become a more efficient, thorough reader. "Leer" (to read) means to "comprehend the meaning of a graphic representation," according to the Real Academia Española. It can also mean to "interpret," "understand," and "discover." These definitions highlight how the cognitive processes used for reading start working early on in our lives: we pay attention and memorize signs, we compare them to establish similarities and differences, and we establish connections to make sense of the world around us. As adults, our general knowledge will continue to inform and affect the way we comprehend texts. Yet there are strategies that can help us better understand and learn what we read. Readers should first establish their "reading goals" and "strategies," all of which will depend on the specific text, or "discourse genre." In other words, if readers need to read an academic text, its genre may be "scientific article," the reading objective may be "read to study," and the strategies may be to "summarize," "understand important concepts," and "memorize definitions." The reading goals and strategies will be different if we are reading a novel for entertainment. The authors offer reading strategies-including creating conceptual maps to place the information in hierarchical order and looking for certain words when the text is a narrative, a description, or an argument-and a chart with 29 genres found in academia and the professional world, all of which will help university students and professionals create their reading strategies. They also suggest ways of learning from the written material, including verbally communicating with an audience. Highly recommended for academic libraries.—Ximena Diego, Brooklyn, NY