If I\u2019m completely honest, when it comes to academic texts, I must admit to expending a lot of mental energy figuring out what portions I can get away with not<\/i> reading while still capturing the essential message of a book.\u00a0 In the time spent attempting to avoid them, I could probably get those portions read that I am trying so hard to skip.\u00a0 I have wrestled with this tendency for years now, always feeling a little guilty (a bit like a cheater, really) as if I am cutting corners in my pursuit of intellectual enrichment.\u00a0 I have contended with serious moral dilemmas over this issue!<\/p>\n
I mean, can I really state honestly<\/i> that I have \u201cread this book\u201d or \u201cengaged with that important treatise\u201d when the portion of its text that passed before my eyes and into my grey matter is less than 50 percent (Or 30 or, gasp<\/i>, 15)?\u00a0 Yet I make that claim with startling regularity.\u00a0 I am pretty sure I have read less than 10\u00a0percent\u00a0of Hirsch\u2019s The Forgotten Ways<\/i>\u00a0but I wave that one around like a silver-haired Church lady does a crocheted handkerchief.\u00a0 I desperately want to be recognized as well-read and current on the latest missional trends but, if I\u2019m willing to continue with the brutal honesty, I have to say the desire for recognition<\/i> is probably stronger than the desire to actually be well-read and current.\u00a0 It motivates me to keep reading, keep talking, keep writing long after my interest in a book\u2019s actual content has faded.\u00a0 I want to be recognized.\u00a0 I want on the platform and it seems that acquiring more knowledge is the fast-track there.<\/p>\n
I have watched, read and listened to brilliant leaders and teachers \u2014 mentors of mine even \u2014 as they quote from a seemingly endless stream of weighty tomes, ponderous literature and lofty written works produced by the greatest of minds of ancient, modern and even post-modern thought, all the while wondering \u201chow do they possibly have time to read all of that?!\u00a0 I will never be able to do that!\u201d\u00a0 Oftentimes, I walk away with dueling emotional responses leading to inner turmoil: Guilt and resolve.<\/p>\n
The demoralizing guilt that accompanies not doing enough to elevate myself to an acceptable intellectual stature collides with my steely resolve to get busy and finally push the up-button on the learning elevator.\u00a0 This collision usually results in a mental vapor lock of sorts, the net result being that I energetically (and partially) read a lot of books.\u00a0 This is ironically similar to what I had been doing prior to the crisis created by the moment of inspiration\u2026\u00a0 And so, the cycle continues.\u00a0 I read a lot of books while at the same time feeling guilty about not actually<\/i> reading a lot of books.\u00a0 So you can imagine my relief to discover that Pierre Bayard (uber-intellectual) not only admits to this kind of behavior, but celebrates it!\u00a0 His book How To Talk About Books You Haven\u2019t Read<\/i> is at the same time both shocking and refreshing for the same reason: abject honesty.<\/p>\n
Bayard cavalierly notes that he, as a professor of literature at the university level, must comment \u201con books that most of the time [he hasn\u2019t] even opened\u201d (xii).\u00a0 Further, it is completely acceptable, preferred at times, to carry on a \u201cconversation about a book you haven\u2019t read \u2014 including, and perhaps especially, with someone else who hasn\u2019t read it either\u201d (xv).\u00a0 What is a book, after all, but an articulation of knowledge in printed (or virtual text) form?\u00a0 Can that same knowledge not be acquired by way of a conversation or a meditation stimulated by a book without actually reading its words?\u00a0 For Bayard, the \u201cidea\u201d behind a text is more likely to be acquired and assimilated if the (non) reader avoids \u201cgetting too close to [the book], where we risk getting lost in its details\u201d (29).\u00a0 The acquisition and assimilation of knowledge by any number of means is the goal, not the discipline of reading the text.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to me that while methods abound for effectively skimming or short-cutting books, very few will be so bold as to come right out and say \u201cI\u2019m not reading that one!\u201d\u00a0 One such example is Derek Rowntree\u2019s Learn How To Study, A Realistic Approach.\u00a0 <\/i>He embraces a method referred to as SQ3R where a book (or portion of a book) is surveyed in a cursory manner while questions are formed in the mind of the reader (or non-reader).\u00a0 Then, the student reads (skims), recalls (outloud and creatively) and reviews the content.\u00a0 This seems to stand in somewhat of a contrast with what Bayard advocates \u2014 not reading a book at all \u2014 in that Rowntree (along with other advocates of quick reading methods) actually expects a student to read at least portions of the text.\u00a0 This is where I find myself most comfortable.<\/p>\n
If the truth be told, when it comes to academic books, I think most everyone engages in some variant of partial reading, or non-reading, of important books yet most will not be honest about the matter.\u00a0 Even those volumes that do receive a thorough reading are soon forgotten.\u00a0 \u201cReading is not just acquainting ourselves with a text\u2026 it is also, from its first moments, an inevitable process of forgetting\u201d (47).\u00a0 What remains are the important ideas and inspirations that found their way to the surface of the consciousness while the reading activity was taking place.\u00a0 There is no reason to feel condemned by this.\u00a0 To put this in proper perspective, if I were to thoroughly read one serious book every week for the entirety of my adult life, that total number would amount to an indiscernibly small percentage of the total of the serious books ever written.\u00a0 So the most well-read intellectual alive has read virtually no books at all, relatively speaking.\u00a0 Apparently, we are all in good company.<\/p>\n
So who wants\u00a0to discuss War And Peace<\/i>? \u00a0I haven’t read that one either…<\/p>\n
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If I\u2019m completely honest, when it comes to academic texts, I must admit to expending a lot of mental energy figuring out what portions I can get away with not reading while still capturing the essential message of a book.\u00a0 In the time spent attempting to avoid them, I could probably get those portions read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"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":[487,478,2,475,476],"class_list":["post-2100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bayardrowtree","tag-books-you-havent-read","tag-dminlgp","tag-lgp5-2","tag-pierre-bayard","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100","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\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2100"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2199,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions\/2199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}