{"id":14263,"date":"2017-10-06T16:03:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T23:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14263"},"modified":"2017-10-06T22:38:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-07T05:38:16","slug":"i-learned-how-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-learned-how-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"I Learned How To Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

Really? How To Read a Book<\/em>? You\u2019d think by the time someone was in the process of acquiring their terminal degree they would have already figured out how to read. Of course, this book title will only be surpassed in irony by our future reading requirement, How to Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read.<\/em><\/p>\n

I went into this book with an eye-roll and an \u201cOk\u2026 let\u2019s just get through this\u201d in my spirit. And although much of this book was rather un-relatable because of how it was tied to specific ways to read a specific type of book (history, science, fiction, non-fiction, autobiography, philosophy, etc.) there was one transcending principle, of reading as more than just gathering information has become incredibly valuable to me. Adler writes, \u201cTo be informed is to know simply that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the best things this book did for me, was to liberate me from the mindset of needing to read every word of a book. Skimming books and jumping on SparkNotes<\/em> is a lazy highschoolers habit as old as the first book report ever assigned. But How to Read a Book<\/em>, takes this concept outside the mindset of being lazy and transforms it into being intentional. The challenge is, \u201cwhat exactly are you trying to get out of this book, go in and hunt for it and get out as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate this for those who might still think this method is cheating or lazy, consider this silly example of the difference between how my wife and I shop when we go to the mall. I walk in with a mission, \u201cI need some new flip flops.\u201d So, I head right to the \u201cFlip Flop Shop\u201d pick out the most stylish\/comfortable pair that is on clearance, and whamo, I\u2019m out before traffic backs up. My wife, on the other hand, might go into the mall for that same one item, but will hit every store on the way so she can see it all, just in case there is some deal or new trend that she might miss out on. (After all our time at the Capetown waterfront, many of you can attest that my wife enjoys the \u201cwandering-shopping\u201d method.) This might be the stereotypical gender difference between the hunter\/gatherer mindset of men and women. I use this illustration to show how I used to read books before. I gathered it all in, I wanted every word, I wandered on every page just in case there was something that might be of value. How to read a book<\/em>, transforms the lollygagger reader, into a ruthless hunter of knowledge (and therefore a saver of time). This concept really tied together well with Dr. Jason Clark\u2019s comment on our second Skype session where he told us not think that just because someone has written a book and it\u2019s published in front of you, means that they are smarter than you. This was very liberating.<\/p>\n

To further this point, Adler uses a quote from Pascal, \u201cWhen we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.\u201d[2]<\/a> This is true, and is important to remember as we are being launched into a program where we the literary gauntlet has been thrown down, challenging us to spend less and less time reading our texts word for word. This challenge that our lead mentor has given us is exciting, but could easily be abused as we simply scan the book for enough information to write an essay, or use the Kindle owned Good Reads<\/em> web service to simply find the most highlighted quotes of a book and call it good. But on the other side of Pascal\u2019s quote, to the one who reads too slow, soaking in\u00a0each word of the text, does not engage in critical thinking as they are reading. All of the sudden this studying for a terminal degree becomes busy work and our minds are not stretched like they should be. I\u2019m reminded of a quote from Albert Einstein, \u201cReading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Cumulatively, this concept from Einstein, the principle from Adler, and the challenge from our lead mentor intends for us to recalculate our distribution of “raw data input” and “energy spent processing”. It seems like the purpose of being assigned this book by our mentors has been to stretch us out of our lazy habits of thinking. We are being ripped out of the undergrad and graduate patterns of \u201cread this and now tell me what you read\u201d and launched into the realm \u201cnow tell me something now.\u201d Or perhaps, at least, tell me how to apply it in a new way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/u><\/p>\n

Adler, Mortimer J., and Van Doren Charles Lincoln.\u00a0How to Read a Book<\/em>. Touchstone Book, 2014.<\/p>\n

Einstein, Albert. “Albert Einstein Quotes.” BrainyQuote. Accessed October 06, 2017. https:\/\/www.brainyquote.com\/quotes\/quotes\/a\/alberteins133807.html.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Mortimer J. Adler and Van Doren Charles Lincoln,\u00a0How to Read a Book<\/em>(Touchstone Book, 2014), loc. 103.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Mortimer J. Adler and Van Doren Charles Lincoln,\u00a0How to Read a Book<\/em>(Touchstone Book, 2014), loc. 272.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Albert Einstein, “Albert Einstein Quotes,” BrainyQuote, accessed October 06, 2017, https:\/\/www.brainyquote.com\/quotes\/quotes\/a\/alberteins133807.html.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Really? How To Read a Book? You\u2019d think by the time someone was in the process of acquiring their terminal degree they would have already figured out how to read. Of course, this book title will only be surpassed in irony by our future reading requirement, How to Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[660,1033,881],"class_list":["post-14263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adler","tag-adler-and-van-doren","tag-how-to-read-a-book","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14271,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14263\/revisions\/14271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}