Political Reading

As I mentioned recently, I minored in “International Studies” in college. I took courses in political history, U.S. international relations, anthropology, and sociology. I also took one economics class, but I don’t recall a thing about it.  My minor was too broad, because I don’t remember very much, and it’s only been five years. I also didn’t read well.

When people started mentioning magazines they read for Weekly Geeks, I realized that I used to read The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other political newspapers and magazines on a regular basis. Since graduation, I haven’t read them. But I greatly enjoyed political subjects: Why don’t I make time to read those things? Continue reading »

Is Reading Online is Making Us Stupid?

There is an interesting article in The Atlantic about reading and our changing reading habits, thanks to the Internet.

I think the author has some great points: internet has changed the way I read, and that’s why I’m feeling a need to really read deeply right now.

In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive. …

In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.

What do you think? Is reading on the Internet making you less able to read?

HTR&W Prologue: Why Read?

I’m giving away a copy of How to Read and Why to someone joining my personal challenge. Read my discussion of the preface for more information.

This is a very long post; I’m breaking my own rules of length because I spent a long time reading and pondering Bloom’s prologue, and I have a lot of thoughts about it. I’ve included a summary at the end under “How Should I Read?” if you don’t care to read all of my post. However, I hope it may be a “difficult pleasure” to read the entire post.

So Many Books, So Little Time

Harold Bloom begins his prologue to How to Read and Why by asking simply, “Why read?” He points out that:

You can read merely to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock. (page 21)

This just reiterates what I’ve always known: there are so many books, and there is so little time.

Why Read Fiction?

Bloom argues that we all should have urgency about us when reading and we should determine why it is that we read. For himself, he claims,

I turn to reading as a solitary praxis, rather than as an educational enterprise. (page 21)

At the same time, he confesses that the best reading is “never an easy pleasure.” So why do we or should we read in our solitary time? He explores this question while also exploring five principles of reading fiction. Bloom argues that when we accept these principles, reading in that solitary time is more enjoyable and fulfilling. Continue reading »

HTR&W Preface and A Challenge

I like to read. I’ve decided it’s time I learn how to read.

I don’t know when I first figured out how to read the written word, but I’ve always been a reader. When I was young, I’d ride my bicycle to the library and return home with my backpack full of books. I’d devour each one and then return to the library for my next batch. I was a compulsive page-turner, finishing a book so I could read the next. Once I entered high school and then college, my “compulsive” reading slowed to only “assigned” reading. I was trying to pass my classes. I did well, and I graduated. It’s been a few years since school. Last year, I realized I was back to my schoolgirl habit: “page-turning,” not reading.

I realized I wasn’t really ingesting the books I read. How can I really “read” a book, even fiction, to get something out of it? Continue reading »