Good Reading Notes
Notes for Personal Reading for Professional Development
This course
Missing this class for good bad reasons and bad good ones
How to use a group
Speak out, break in
How did you make your list?
Don't read during this class
Adults will read, talk, not listen when you talk
Dialogue and the limits of one mind
Superlatives can be tiring
Read each title on your list to the others -- have patience
There is joy, value in saying a whole book succinctly
Converse with others about books -- in here and later
Have a pen in here and use it
Know the value, use of silence
Assignments
Three possible make-up activities
Statement of why you are taking this course
Books and subjects you would like to talk, hear about
List of what you may read in the next few years
TEN favorite books
List of books you have read
Activities
Lectures
Group meetings
Conversations
Research in libraries, bookstores, and with parents, mates, children
Make-up activities
Book swap, meal
Reading
Have you read an acre?
Find and face disagreement among sources
Know the authors that matter to you
Have a good reading chair, light, position(s)
Give yourself to a book
Pay a babysitter so you can go to the library
Bring home 10 to 20 books to find one
Read what you wish you understood, would like to do
There are always good works you haven't heard of
There is a difference between escape and adding realms to your mind
Literacy as a cost as well as a benefit
It's a gift of self to read another's favorite book
It's ok not to remember much from a book
National Union Catalog may help
Poetry, drama, visuals have a place
A fat book is only several thin ones
Book clubs can help, pester
Use International Paper articles
Search out the references that are repeatedly cited
Think about trying to remember if you read it
Purpose of reading can be to read
Meeting and resenting the author
Go get a book when you think of it
Recognize book lust
Get a book's content from another person who can read what you can't
Read a book to make a new you (old you + the book)
Some limit science and math reading because of literary imagination
Others are often amazed at what you can learn from a book
What is the total number of books you will read?
"I read low-level books; I'm not a highbrow."
Speed reading may be just what you don't need
You must not finish a boring or poor book
Re-read what's good. Re-read to see the newer you.
Read several books at once; switch among them
Read very slowly -- a line a day -- to savor
Read a book over several years' time
Have enough faith in your interests to follow them
Be able to trust yourself to start a new book a year from now
Know your interests: nurture and interconnect them
Buy only after needing for a year
Don't be afraid to buy -- books are cheaper than what you spend on gasoline and movies
Protect your time to read and reflect
Read aloud to another or even to yourself
Read to move yourself beyond your time and place
Read kids' books on tough subjects
Read old books -- 60 years after death = perspective
Read the very latest before your competitors or profs do
Talk to someone about a book you haven't read
Reading (part 2)
Read about sex
Will reading become extinct?
Ask Dover, Second Chance to re-release your beloved book
Acquiring the experience of a new book makes a new you
You can learn anything in 10 years -- Suzuki
Got a problem? Read about it!
Often we read what others recommend to us
There are many reference books worth reading
For many purposes, books are better reading than journals
The general level of taste in the public may be low but you are different
Read all of an author's works
Read about a favorite author's life
Read 30-60 minutes a day
You may very well have a hungry mind -- feed it
What qualifies as professional reading? Your defenses, your hunches
Know libraries and bookstores directly
Plan to pay off some of the debt you owe so many authors
Does any other art engage you for so many hours?
Get in the habit of finding whatever has ever appeared in English
Learn another language and read in it
Be in shape to read: your neck, arms Squirm
Read your list of books read carefully. What kind of person does it suggest?
Do not constantly worry yourself with little quizzes. William James said the gardener cannot allow himself to constantly pull up the plants to see how the roots are doing. He must have trust and patience.
Often it is the impression, sense of familiarity that is gained
You cannot see the effect of your childhood ice cream cone
Start to figure out what subjects there are.
You are adult. You can read any book.
Sometimes we stash a book on our shelves instead of reading it.
There is a web -- one thought leads to another. Also, subjects to further subjects
Ken Ost, Jim Fleming (Wis. Public radio Chapter a Day) other narrators are model readers. Also the readers of many audio books
Learn to go slowly, not needing to achieve
Be aware of "80 Years of Best Sellers"
Beware of "best sellers"
Find the author who speaks to you
Your self is validated by realizing that you and the author feel the same
Read several sides of an argument
Read error, fully digesting what you hate
You have a need to talk about your reading after all these years
Is too much reading immoral?
Are there bookaholics?
Should you see the movie or read the book first?
Don't leave the library frustrated -- that's mistraining yourself
Make use of inter-library loans
What are your personal classics?
Do you agree that there are "50 Works of English Literature We Could Do Without"?
Can books be made from movies?
What is the relation of books to movies?
Sometimes let boredom wash over you
Read over your head -- a cat can look at a king
Do you browse enough? More as you get older
Have you been chided for having your nose in a book?
You have instant access to your own encyclopedia
There is value in just thinking about what you have read
Falling asleep and reading
Change speeds
Getting lost -- being too dense to hear while reading
Books
What books do you hate?
What books do you own?
What do you think you have in your collection that isn't really there?
Do you lend books? Record the lending?
Are your books marked? How?
Do you borrow books? Return them?
Have you bought a second copy unknowingly?
Sometimes it is very handy to own 2 or more copies
It is worth figuring out what will and won't be in paperback
Books that affect strongly may not be the same as books most liked
List and file great moving beautiful quotes
Get a book's contents from someone who could stand it
Don't be afraid of allegory -- try it or skip it
Some books have very dense language
Books may be copied cheaply but beware
Paper can be self-destructive because of acid
Type fonts and size affect us physically, emotionally
Book weight and size also affect us
Read E.B. White, the head stylist
Good books don't have to be positive
Books do get lost -- do you know where copies of what you need are?
Make your own bindings or reinforce them
Books are refined thought, distilled speech
Books enable high speed input of high quality language
There are good sources of periodical subscriptions
Read and know what it is to be an intellectual; differentiate intelligent and intellectual
Savor, steep yourself in good language
10¢ sales are sad
Making a book is agony
Ecclesiastes: "Of the making of books, there is no end."
Own your own copy -- list the good parts on the flyleaf, highlight
What's written last, travels over space and time
Many courses are equivalent to a few books
Donations to libraries
Self Development
Contact others -- dare!
Be aware of the force of evolutionary change
There is a big difference between addiction and concentration
Guilt is debilitating
Use personal computers to aid you
Realize the sense of tragedy and the cost of American equality and myths
Beware the glory of literature and the trash of peons
Think of Michaelangelo and the Kiwanis
Look at your standard of living -- Linder, Jessie Bernard
Go abroad
Nurture your ego: act, do not berate yourself -- "The Inner Game of Tennis" - Gallwey
Fool around until you are 40
Have enough ego to be able to exhibit your drawings - "Drawing of the Right Side of the Brain" - Betty Edwards
Writing
Many subjects try to ape physics -- it is not the only way but it can be good
Know the LMP, Writer's Digest
Story-telling often transfixes even toughies. The power of a story: "Jaws", radio's "The Shadow"
Understand copyright
Know vanity, self publishing, small presses, web publishing
There is strong competition for many presses
What is written lasts, travels and can take on a life of its own
C.S. Lewis was surprised at what he read of his motives and habits
Personal writing and published writing are both important
Creating visual materials is also a possibility
Teachers
Needn't fight over good units
Are self-sacrificing by the nature of their jobs
Have, are authority
Use personal approaches
Have a reading day
Have exhibits
Promote books as gifts
Can enjoy their maturity
Represent old-fashioned coherence, clarity
Can test a book
Can formally sample a book in a test situation
Can computerize book testing
Use lady-tasting-tea-format
Read on their own level what they teach
Read what students and your own children like
Often pushing reading instead of joy
Get beyond courses in your own education
As graduates, can read reading lists for courses
Know, modify their own opinion of the process that educates
Use the series: repeat, paraphrase, criticize
Get degree, not just credits
Know what's beyond the master's
Must be assertive
Are intellectual themselves
Need to grow aside of specialty
Have special fun, special burden in their jobs
Use the 3-part curriculum
Know, use the 5 dimensions of a person
Face stigma as educators, education majors
Understand the effect of your major
Recall other majors considered
Face up to the deadly academic impulse
Create written materials: position papers, memos, reading lists, publicity, pamphlets
Must learn regularly
Are intellectual leaders
Face the age of information
Know plenty, what others do not know
Must answer public criticism forthrightly
Can use professional organizations
Can use professors
Face over-use, mis-use of "professional"
Revise low esteem of own master's degree
Face difference between elementary and secondary training
Use 2 liars and 2 readers in class
Allow reading without book reports
Know that knowledge is not linear, additive
Teach both abstract and practical education
Have broad definition of professional reading
Can resist, criticize bleak versions of the future
Call for the courses they want from universities
Allow students to write notes to each other
Can spot heavy-handed literature vs. captivating literature
Aware of meaning, indication of quality circles
Use cloze procedure
Grade level formulas help, hurt -- see E.B.White
Realize the loss of fun in an assigned book
Know that kids often think "fiction" means "true"
Realize that visual special effects confuse kids -- is the Hulk real?
Are aware of the value of comics
Push gently, subtly, with real patience
Expand definitions of what's relevant to the subject
Have a special calling and a boring job
Work on the integration of subjects