Let's Discuss: Feed Your Mind, new SCM blog post

Well, I think I’m doing sort of okay.  I always have 1 non-fict. and 1 fiction book going.  Always the Bible, and currently, a devotional.  However, I haven’t been trying to read any classic fiction work….I shy away from the long sentences and the drawn out descriptions.  I have found that I can listen to classic fiction better than read them, because I have the awful ability to speed-read.

Like Tristan, I tend toward the binge- reading, especially in the fiction genre.  However, if I draw out a book too long, I find that I lose interest in finishing it.   That just recently happened w/ a book titled “Cowed”.  It’s about how the too-large farms are ruining the Earth and everything on it.  Since we’re a mid-size family farm, I thought I should read up on why people hate us. ?  (We milk approx. 100 cows.)  Anyway,  another book (THM) came across my bookstack……off went Cowed, on came THM.   Now I’m annoyed at myself, and yet, I’ve lost the oomph to finish Cowed.

Last year I made free reading lists for each kid, but only put out 5 or so at a time for variety. It worked very well. I still schedule in certain books at specific times for history and literature, but the free read list is a big part of our reading, too. DS11 especially liked the choice aspect since he isn’t a big reader.

I am in a personal reading rut right now, too. Time to vary my stacks by the bed!

Christie

I talked to a woman who had five books going at every time – one for each weekday of the week.  Each of the five books came from a different genre.  So, for example, Monday was nonfiction, Tuesday was spiritual growth, Wednesday was fiction, etc.

I haven’t had the discipline to do that myself, but I do think it’s a great idea.

My problem is that I have so many books/ebooks/audiobooks on the go at any given time that I lose track of some of them.   This post has inspired me to get organized so make sure that I am well balanced.  I also need to keep a better list of all the recommendations from various groups and forums so that I know what I want to read next.

For my children, after reading “The Book Whisperer” by Donalyn Miller, I challenged each of them to read a certain number of books in 2015 including least 2 of each genre or category. They can only ‘count’ 10 in any one genre.  They quickly maxed out their favorite genres and then had to start exploring new areas.  It’s interesting to see new sparks of interest developing.  They are still reading their favourites as well, but those don’t count toward their totals for the challenge.

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it. […] The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

– C.S. Lewis on reading old books

I’m really failing, personally, in this area. Everything I read is related to homeshooling or parenting. I need to feed my mind, outside of the jobs that I do. However, I don’t just want to be entertained. My time is sacred, so I’d rather not waste it on a novel that has no staying power. I wan’t something that moves me.

Any good suggestions?