To read of Abigail Adam's lengthy separation from her family, her diff

Question

To read of  Abigail Adams' lengthy separation from her family, her difficult travels, and her constant battles with illness is to feel intensely how harsh life was even for the so-called aristocracy of Revolutionary times.

(A) To read of
(B) Reading about
(C) Having read about
(D) Once one reads of
(E) To have read of

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Narenn · Accepted Answer

Choice A The sentence uses simple present tense structure :- To read X (subject) is (verb) to feel Y (object) Is is the main verb. The subject To read and the object to feel are in the infinitive form (Infinitive is a verbal consisting of the word to plus a verb and acts as a Noun, adjective, or adverb) . The Infinitive form of both subject and object makes the subject phrase and the object phrase parallel to each other. A) Sentence is correct as written. B) INCORRECT :- Here the subject used in gerund form Reading , which is not parallel with object (which is an infinitive). C) INCORRECT :- Awkward subject phrase Having read D) INCORRECT :- Here reads acts as verb and thus the sentence contains two verbs reads and is with any conjunction. The usage of once is confusing. E) INCORRECT :- Redundant have makes the subject wordy. Hope that helps!

GMATNinja · Answer

Yup, "to read of" is definitely an idiomatic construction -- one of about 25,000 idioms in English .

For whatever it's worth, here's the difference between "to read" and "to read of": "to read X" --> X is generally something that you can actually read, like a book or a poem or a report. "To read a Greek cookbook is to feel an indescribable longing for feta cheese and baklava." Or a simpler example: "I like to read books about Afghani cuisine." "to read of X" --> X is generally a topic or an idea, and not an actual document. "To read of Greek cuisine is to feel an indescribable longing for feta cheese and baklava." Or a simpler example: "I like to read of Afghani cuisine." (Though that sounds pretentious as all hell, and I'm not sure why we wouldn't just say "I like to read ABOUT Afghani cuisine.") I wouldn't lose too much sleep over this one, though. Again, there are about 25,000 idioms in English , and I'd be really, really surprised if you run into this particular construction ever again on the GMAT. This particular question is official, but it's as old as dirt, and sounds like an outdated form of English. So the odds that you have to deal with this particular type of sentence again are really, really slim.

arjsingh1976 · Answer

A is correct !

 To read of  Abigail Adamsâ€™ lengthy separation from her family, her difficult travels, and her constant battles with illness is  to feel  intensely how harsh life was even for the so-called aristocracy of Revolutionary times. 

(A) To read of 
(B) Reading about 
(C) Having read about 
(D) Once one reads of 
(E) To have read of 
 
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rwj · Answer

Parallelism: To read... is to feel
(E) has tense error.

Hence (A)

HanoiGMATtutor · Answer

To read ... is to feel ... . The correct answer choice is obvious.

mkumar26 · Answer

can anyone explain option D ?
I know answer but I don't am not sure about option D !

sunny91 · Answer

To read of .......sounds like the main purpose is to feel intensely. Please clarify the meaning.
Also, the construction to read of X, looks odd. To read about Xor on X makes more sense.

sunny91 · Answer

Hi,
Is to read of an idiomatic construction? To read X ....is to feel Y makes more sense to me.
Can u kindly clear the distinction between to read of X and to read X.

mamun2871 · Answer

It's pretty question for me. i answered C but now clear about the error. Thank you guys who answered and explained correctly. !!!!!

Prasannathawait · Answer

Excellent explanation.
Thanks. Now I understood the difference between to read and to read of.

gmatt1476 · Answer

Official Explanation

Parallelism; Verb form

A common device used to associate two verbs is structured by using the following parallel form:   is  . A well-known example of this “To know her is to love her.” This sentence correctly follows this parallel form.

A. Correct. This choice is well expressed, correctly following the device discussed above.

B. This choice does not correctly follow the device discussed above.

C. This choice does not correctly follow the device discussed above.

D. This choice does not correctly follow the device discussed above.

E. This choice uses an infinitive phrase, but it is not parallel. The simple infinitive to feel is mirrored by to have read, which is not parallel. This fails to convey properly the association between the two verbs.

The correct answer is A.

sarphant123 · Answer

To read of Abigail Adams' lengthy separation from her family, her difficult travels, and her constant battles with illness is to feel intensely how harsh life was even for the so-called aristocracy of Revolutionary times.
Notice the parallelism marker “IS” in “is to feel”
Now the parallelism used here is subtle and the marker used here is called Linking Verbs.
_____ …. IS to feel
So the correct answer choice should start with an infinitive- To + __

(A) To read of
Best of ALL.

(B) Reading about
Incorrect Parallelism

(C) Having read about
Incorrect Parallelism

(D) Once one reads of
Incorrect Parallelism

(E) To have read of
Have is wordy and redundant here. It is simple present here.

kornn · Answer

Dear  GMATGuruNY   DmitryFarber   MartyTargetTestPrep   AjiteshArun   GMATRockstar   VeritasPrepHailey   EducationAisle   GMATNinja   VeritasPrepBrian   ccooley ,

Is choice B. wrong just because of parallelism?
(B)  Reading about

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

varotkorn  Yep. The core is "To read is to feel." "Reading is to feel" just doesn't work the same way.

Basshead · Answer

To read  of Abigail Adams' lengthy separation from her family, her difficult travels, and her constant battles with illness  is to feel intensely how harsh life was even for the so-called aristocracy of Revolutionary times.

Answer is A.

Hoozan · Answer

Similar Question: https://gmatclub.com/forum/to-speak-hab ... nwarranted.

VerbalBot · Answer

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To read of Abigail Adam's lengthy separation from her family, her diff

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To read of Abigail Adam's lengthy separation from her family, her diff

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