"Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare." Harriet Martineau
“a man’s world be no smaller than the mind of the man who scans it” Louis L'Amour
This blog owes it genesis to Mickey who asked the question "How are society and school different". I will discuss that more with her but a related issue is how we can learn by reading. This is true whether in school or out of school. One of our greatest opportunities to learn is by reading. But to read is not enough. Too often people read to get though a book or an article. They do not take the time to think about what they are reading. And by not taking that time, they lose an opportunity to learn.
When you read a book, you are receiving the author's point of view. That doesn't mean the author is right. Learn to think for yourself. Ask questions. Think about possibilities. Think about what the author is saying.
Of course some books are just read for entertainment but even these books provide an opportunity for you to think. The book is set in Austria? What do you know about Austria? The book is about a person hiking in the Swiss Alps? Have you ever been hiking? Does the authors adventures resemble your own? How are they alike? Different? The book is set in 1823? How are things different now from then? How would you like to live back in that time?
The opportunity to think as we read always exists but we do not always take the opportunity to exercise our minds and think. Sometimes we are just passive readers. For that reason sometimes I choose books that force me to think. Books such as Walden by Thoreau or Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. For each person the type of book that will prompt them to think may vary.
What if you live where there isn't a lot of books available? The internet solves a lot of that issue today. There are free ebook readers available and a lot of free ebooks also. Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ is one such source with ebooks available for free in many formats. Find a book on a subject of interest to you. Read. Think. You'll be amazed at what you can learn and how the more you read, the more you think, the easier learning becomes.
Comments
Great advice!
Good and brilliant idea about reading,I am someone likes you have pointed out in the blog"passive reader"I love reading too,but always read and then put in down to the place where the books rightly belong.
After this blog i will read and think further about the books and the feelings as the author writing it.
thanks
"When you read a book, you are receiving the author's point of view. That doesn't mean the author is right. Learn to think for yourself. Ask questions. Think about possibilities. Think about what the author is saying." Very good idea!
Can I say, I'm too lazy to think. LOL. I love reading books and amazed with the kind of researches that most authors did to write even for a simple book such as a romance book. So it prompted me to think even a simple thing, and sometimes made me surf the net just to understand further.