Susan Wise, dedicated this chapter to poetry. I loved how she compares every category of reading and gives tips to read them carefully and obtain a lot of meaning. I first didn't liked poetry, because in school I had a really hard time trying to get the meaning out of it. But Susan is precise and says that all poems talk about death, love or God. And it helped me a lot looking in that way for simplicity.
And we are all actors... You can imagine what this chapter will talk about just by taking a look at the title. Yes. Drama, playwrights and theater!!! The author gives a comparison of playwrights and novels. Were in playwrights is very open to imagination and novels to interpretations. It got me interested the play of Sartre "No Exit".
This chapters gives you advices on how to read plays it has the same dynamic as in the other categories. This chapter talked about history and many of the branches that this has. Many times historians feel frustrated because the evidence they have is never complete and conclusive to answer all the questions about life in the past. So many times we make up conclusions and create a new way of thinking based on what "was" back in the day. When reading history ask the 5 Ws. who? why? where? when? what?
Check the last two paragraphs of each chapter and the final chapter of the book (for summaries). Highlight it and then write it down in your own words for your understanding. This got me interested into reading Utopia and The Communist Manifesto. No one need to be an expert to write an autobiography. The autobiographer need to put his thoughts and events in order.
Proper autobiography begins with birth and family ancestry. The person who has is writing an autobiography is a person that many times has been pulled, forced by someone or something that he or she might have never understand it but this is what makes it interesting because many people would feel very identified and would like to know how this other person reacted to the same or similar issue. It's a win win situation, because the author is also trying to understand himself. I liked a lot this quote by Freud "I have no more made my book than my book has made me." Autobiographies give the author the opportunity to give meaning to his past events and give shape, and sense to what someday maybe he didn't understand or where meaningless. To make yourself unique in an autobiography you have to write another story counterpoint to its own to remark the uniqueness of the author.
It's important when reading a novel to read the title of the book, the preface only if it's written by the author because many times it can ruin you the plot, or make you think in a certain way. The last pages, the author gives a short summary of the classical books. In my opinion I didn't find it useful, because some books that I haven't read I didn't wanted to know what they were going to be like. Also it was the longest chapter so far and it was very tiring to keep track. I had to rest a little bit and continue reading it. But still, it gave a lot of good advices in how to become a better reader and understanding the text by discussing the book with another person and also making your own summarizes and questions at the end of each chapter.
The secret to reading a difficult text is to turn the page over and move on, it's ok not to get it the first time.
The goal of logic-stage inquiry is to understand why and how. The goal for grammar-stage reading is to know what the author says. Sites to check up on critics essays
This chapter advices us to keep a journal to record our ideas. We need to organize our readings so they have a connection and we must do a subject at a time in order for us to organize our ideas. How do we do this? By writing in a journal our ideas for us to later remember. When we write ideas and understandings on our own is more likely for us to understand the meaning of it and the book.
Having a journal helps you become more creative and explicit with your thoughts. First we should write a sentence/quote and later write a brief summary followed by a series of questions. The goal of education is not to memorize and stuff things in our heads but to understand them as they are. Is very important that we keep journals of our discoveries, thoughts, ideas and learning so we go back and remember them. To become a speed reader you don't have to read every line but you can glance over it and identify the main words. This way you can import the meaning of the whole passage not bothering with the little words.
This chapter gave a lot of advices to improve our speed reading, such as leading the lecture with the finger and also practicing 15 minutes every day (preferably at the morning) to focus on the sound of the words. A well trained mind is the result of application, not inborn genius.
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AuthorThe Well Educated Mind Susan Wise Bauer. ArchivesCategories |