By: Jonita Fair-Payton on January 13, 2023
I made a declaration on Tuesday morning, during incredible physical pain from new formed gallstones, that I’m DONE with hard things. I am not doing anything else that is hard for at least 6 months. I am only doing things, experiencing people, feeling emotions, sharing words, and listening in ways that are easy for me…
By: Kally Elliott on January 13, 2023
In middle school I wrote horrible lovesick poetry to boyfriends. In high school I spent late nights in the laundry room pecking away at my dad’s computer composing essays for my Honor’s Lit class. In college I received an A- on an essay on religious freedom. A few weeks later my would-be husband had to…
By: Jennifer Vernam on January 13, 2023
Over my lifetime, I can chart on my shelf the books that have given me inspiration, companionship and even healing. In years past, reading for me has been a refuge. As an adult I have discovered that I also enjoy writing, especially the process of editing. I find it immensely satisfying develop a text into…
By: Cathy Glei on January 13, 2023
As I type this post, what is most prevalent in my mind is “I hope I am writing this blog post correctly?” (Slight panic, just being honest). Some of you may relate. While trying something new is difficult, I am reminded of a quote, “Ask yourself if what you are doing today is getting you…
By: Adam Harris on January 12, 2023
While wading through this week’s material on reading more intelligently, thinking more critically, and taking smarter notes, I was reminded of the idea, It’s better to dig a few deep wells, than hundreds of shallow ones. [1] I’ve run across a few versions of this saying over the years from spiritual leaders and yogi’s, and…
By: Jenny Dooley on January 12, 2023
I buy books. Lots of books! I bought How to Read a Book, by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, decades ago. I don’t recall having ever read it. I laughed at the realization of having packed, unpacked, and repacked a book I had never finished over the course of five international relocations. I…
By: Russell Chun on January 12, 2023
“Interessanterweise sind unsere beiden Autoren (Adler und Ahrens) Deutsche.” Translation: It is interesting to note that both our authors (Adler and Ahrens) are German. Part 1, Sönke Ahrens, How to take Smart Notes Grade: A Sönke Ahrens sparked my interest as many of his Smart Note taking points are “informed” as he says, by his…
By: Scott Dickie on January 12, 2023
The title of my blog is from some Lord of the Rings character, in one of the three movies, before one of the important battles. If I could figure out how to add a footnote on this blog page, I might be more compelled to communicate with a bit more accuracy and precision, which would…
By: Pam Lau on January 12, 2023
Writing was my refuge. I could slip in between every word and feel my body stretch itself without limits, rules or expectations. Especially as an imaginative, outspoken adolescent girl whose critical thinking skills were wildly untethered, my songs, poems, letters and stories sheltered me with their walls. The more than 300 journals in my garage…
By: Tim Clark on January 12, 2023
On a bookshelf in my house sits a small wooden plaque with a quote from Thomas Jefferson “I cannot live without books”. This accurately reflects how I feel about reading, but it also serves as a passive justification to my wife for the unreasonable amount of money I’ve spent on books over the years. I…
By: John Fehlen on January 12, 2023
Last year I read 115 books, and the year before that I read 150. For a number of years now I have set really high goals of reading pretty much whatever I can get my hands on, and in large quantities. Fiction, non-fiction, children’s literature, journals, periodicals, manuals, cookbooks, and the like. Honestly, I’ve been…
By: Kim Sanford on January 12, 2023
If the question today is, “How are my reading skills?” the answer is, in a word, mediocre. Obviously, I can read, but speed and long-term retention have always been my weak points. Even just this week, I picked a book off my working bibliography and began to read it. After about 30 pages, I realized…
By: Esther Edwards on January 11, 2023
“As you shuffle through hundreds of notes and a dozen lines of thought, you start feeling that you’re…spiraling down into a black hole of confusion, paralyzed by what seems to be an increasingly complex and ultimately unmanageable task.”[1] [2] Ah, yes. The black hole. I am there. If I am honest, the black hole…
