{"id":30023,"date":"2023-01-12T08:35:46","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T16:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=30023"},"modified":"2023-01-12T08:47:15","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T16:47:15","slug":"learning-to-read-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/learning-to-read-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to read"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a bookshelf in my house sits a small wooden plaque with a quote from Thomas Jefferson \u201cI cannot live without books\u201d<\/em>. 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\u2019ve spent on books over the years.<\/p>\n

I have always had a healthy appetite for reading and have long been in the habit of marking up my books with underlines, circles, and notes. The skill of writing came later, but my calling is inextricably tied to it, whether writing a sermon, an article, or church communication. if you asked me six months ago whether I was any good at writing, I would have answered that I was proficient, and on a good day, even competent.<\/p>\n

So, you can imagine my horror when I discovered I didn\u2019t really know how to read, or take notes, or write efficiently. The books How to Read a Book<\/em> and How to Take Smart Notes<\/em> were the vehicles that drove me to that sad conclusion.<\/p>\n

How to Read a Book<\/em> is a bit of a misleading title; it sounds like an elementary primmer, but it is far from that. This book led me to a paradigm shift. I was taught\u2014as I imagine most people were\u2014to read every word of a book because \u201csomething in there must be gold, and if you skim pages or skip chapters, you might miss the motherlode.\u201d At 54 years old, I found I\u2019ve been reading books all wrong.<\/p>\n

How To Read A Book<\/em> suggests the unthinkable: One can approach a book to extract the information needed from it, and a person can sometimes do that without reading every word\u2014sometimes without reading many of the words, at all. However, other kinds of reading requires looking at all the words, and with a deeper engagement than many are used to. The authors unpack different levels of reading depending on what a reader intends to get from a book (and depending on the kind of book it is), and those approaches have already helped me squeeze more out of a book in less time than I thought was possible.<\/p>\n

Similarly, I\u2019ve been taking notes all my life; How to Take Smart Notes<\/em> showed me I\u2019ve been ineffective at it, since most of my notes live in books I\u2019ve read and are not easily retrievable in one place to use in writing. Here I learned simple strategies to capture what I\u2019m reading to easily reference later, making my writing process much more efficient.<\/p>\n

Although I sadly discovered how poor I\u2019ve been at reading and taking notes, there is a silver lining: I\u2019ve found a process to get better at something I already love to do. If I cannot live without books, and I have a calling to write, then finding smart ways to exponentially improve in those things is like winning the lottery. and I\u2019m excited to put these newfound tools to work this semester.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a bookshelf in my house sits a small wooden plaque with a quote from Thomas Jefferson \u201cI cannot live without books\u201d. 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\u2019ve spent on books over the years. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"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":[2502,660,2326],"class_list":["post-30023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp2","tag-adler","tag-ahrens","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30023","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\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30023"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30025,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30023\/revisions\/30025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}