Time Out for Books: The Demon Queen and the Locksmith

The last month has been so busy that I haven't even had time to update our reading lists.

This time of the year is crazy!
The High Holy Days have been upon us, and the Month of Tishrei (seventh Jewish month) is basically one long holiday. Rosh Hashanah (Tishrei 1-2), Fast of Gedaliah (Tishrei 3), Ten Days of Repentence (Tishrei 1-10), Yom Kippur (Tishrei 10), Sukkot Tishrei 15-21, Hoshanah Rabbah (Tishrei 21), Sh'mini Atzeret (Tishrei 22) and Simchat Torah (Tishrei 23). I get tired just listing them, let alone celebrating them all. Many Jews call the eighth month, Cheshvan, Marcheshvan (bitter Cheshvan) because it has no holidays except Shabbat. But it was not a Jewish baalboostah (mistress of the house) who made that up, let me tell you! I love the peace and quiet of Cheshvan.

And then there has been the additional duties that go with our involvment in the patriot movement. We've had the 9-11 commemoration, the 9-12 Rally, the Patriot Alliance Leadership Retreat, and now the Continental Congress Elections. (Have you voted yet? Here is voting information for this non-partisan, non-political citizen's congress).

And there's my work with Retake Congress. And the Engineering Geek's work that puts the bread and butter on the table. And the Boychick's education. And this week, to top it all off, on Tuesday I got a call from the school nurse. The Boychick had contracted H1N1. I brought him home to bed with his first real illness ever: chills, fever, cough and aches and pains. Well. We don't have to worry about the unproven vaccination. He'll be immune now.

Nevertheless, these past few weeks I have made a special point of taking time out for reading. Pictured above is an array of new books for the Guest Room/Library.

I just finished The Demon Queen and the Locksmith by local author Spencer Baum. Although it is a book written for young adults, I couldn't put it down! I got this book because Spencer is also a libertarian homeschooler and he wrote his book about an imaginary town called Turquoise that sounds a lot like Taos, NM. Complete with the mountain and the hum.
The book is an adventure story involving a high-school boy, Kevin Brown, and two homeschooling friends, and it involves the Ta--I mean the Turquoise Hum. It also features two radio personalities, one a lot like Art Bell, and of course, a Demon Queen. The underlying theme of the story is what happens when teens learn of truth that is unpopular and even considered "black helicopter" crazy by their peers and according to their previous understandings. However, this book does not lecture and it does not moralize; Baum allows the story to carry the theme with grace and humor. He's never preachy, and always maintains a sense of adventure and fun. I'd read it again, and right away, too; except that the Boychick has snapped it up.

I recommend The Demon Queen and the Locksmith for young adults and the young at heart! It can be found at Amazon here. I hope there will be continuing adventures from Spencer Baum.

I am now looking forward to dipping into Margaret Atwood's new novel, The Year of the Flood, as well as Karen Armstrong's The Case for God. And I have been reading The Anti-Federalist Papers in short bits and bites for a few weeks now. On my list is also a re-read of Nechama Tec's history, Defiance: The Story of the Beilski Partisans.

So many books, so little time! But truly, books keep me sane during this insanely busy time.

Ragamuffin Reading: The New Library is . . . Comfortable

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

I was going to call this post 'the new library is finished.' But then I realized that I added five new books to it just this week. Libraries are never finished!

It may not look like it, but these books are in order on the shelves now--These shelves contain world history, American history, Judaic studies, world religions, field guides, and science.

The quilt (left) is 24 years old this summer. My coworkers at "The Children's Meeting Place" made it for me just before I stopped working to give birth to the Chem Geek Princess. The center panel has her ultra-sound picture, back when she was "Junior" (as in a Junior Lotaburger. I was addicted to the Green Chile Junior Lotaburger while pregnant).



These shelves are also in order: general psychology, politics, practical arts and how-to, writing and language, biography, and fiction. (Teaching, schooling, ASD, and gifted kids, are all in my office. Astronomy, Math and Woodworking will go in the Engineering Geek's office).







In honor of making the library a cool and comfortable place to read, and to assert the never-finished dogma of libraries, I ordered some new books this week: Bastiat's That Which is Seen & That Which is Unseen and his The Law, as well as Murray Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty. The Amazon reviews for Rothbard's book promised that reading it will make me an anarcho-capitalist.





I also ordered Henry Hazlitt's classic Economics in One Lesson, and at Borders I picked up The Politics of Freedom: Taking on the Left, the Right and Threats to Our Liberties by David Boaz. He is a fellow at CATO.

This July the heat is bothering me more than last year--ah, the joys of RA--and the library-guest room is the coolest room in the house.




Although she has been subdued this morning after the strange and abberation of a fight with Lily last night, Shayna wagged her tail in the cool of the library this morning.


I hope the calm of the library will be a place for them to rest while I read through the heat of the remaining summer afternoons!


Summer afternoons, cozy winter evenings, happy spring and fall mornings--these are all times to curl up in platform rocker and read. As Jefferson said:


"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." -- Notes on Va., 1782.


If I am not out and about, you'll find me in the comfortable but unfinished library, improving my mind!

Of An Ominous Financial Crash, An Ordinary National Election, A Trivial Tea Party

One of the great pleasures of finally setting up my library (after more than ten years of rooting in boxes), is the pleasure of re-reading old books that I own, after a long absence. One of the most intellectually delightful and challenging aspects of this rediscovery is reading with fresh eyes, from a different perspective in space and time, as well as experience and knowledge. Thus, ideas come together in new and interesting ways, keeping the mind active, and providing much welcome new understandings that can blunt the worry and concerns of our times.

So it is that a book that I had been thinking about came into my hand once again, out of the depth of a box labeled simply: Books (4/06)--Under-stair closet. Most of the books in these boxes had first been packed in the summer of 2000, when the kids and I moved from our rental house in Rio Rancho, to the first house I had ever owned; the one that I thought I would live in for a long time. Never unpacked for the nearly two years we lived in that house, they were moved again in early summer 2002, when the Engineering Geek and I married, and we moved into a house in the Far Northeast Heights of Albuquerque. Three years ago in April 2006, in the process of moving once again to this house in Sedillo, we unpacked boxes of his-and-hers books that had come to reside under the stairs in the walk-out basement, in order to give away about one third of them and move the rest. They were shuffled and re-packed, and I remember seeing this particular book, but neither of us had the leisure to actually read any of them.

So this book came to my hands again last Tuesday, a book that I had thought about quite a bit over the past half-year because of the events that are overtaking our country. The book is called The Fourth Turning, An American Prophecy: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendevous with Destiny by William Strauss and Neil Howe. I stood there, among the half-emptied boxes, haphazardly piled books awaiting some semblance of order, feeling a sense of familiar excitement, as the book fell open in my hands. It opened to a chapter toward the end of the book, "A Fourth Turning Prophecy", and as I glanced down the page, I read:

"Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America
will enter the Fourth Turning . . . A spark will ignite a new mood. Today, the
same spark would flame briefly but then extinguish, its last flicker merely
confirming and deepening the Unraveling-era mind-set. This time, though it
will catalyze a Crisis. In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a
financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party."
(Strauss & Howe, 1997, p. 272).

That last sentence, in particular, jumped out at me, demanded my attention, and sent a chill of recognition through me. "Wow," I thought. "This is an American Prophecy--not in the sense of reading the tea leaves, but in the more traditional sense of those who stand on the tracks and see the train coming from a long way off."

The authors, Strauss and Howe, published their first book together in 1991. It was called Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069.In it, they present a history of the United States and a possible vision of the future drawn in broad strokes, told as the story of generations, each four of which has a particular archetypical "personality." From this Strauss and Howe have developed a theory that the lifecycle placement of these generations (childhood, young adulthood, middle-age, elder) influences the mood of all of them, and further, creates a seasonal cycle lasting 80 - 90 years, that they call the saeculum. This consists of an exuberant High "spring", a turbulent, fertile Awakening "summer", an unraveling social fabric "fall", and a Crisis "winter." They detect just such a cycle operating in Anglo-American history since the Reformation. In The Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe go on to predict the coming of the new crisis, as the Boomers take their place as elders and the Millenial generation enters young adulthood.

I read The Fourth Turning in 1998, as a Strauss and Howe Unraveling Turning was approaching its end. They describe an Unraveling Turning as "a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order (created during the High) idecays and the new values regime (created during the Awakening) implants." (p. 3). When I read the book, I certainly identified with and recognized the Unraveling mood they were describing, and I had been walking through my life at that time with the strong notion that "this can't last." Therefore, I was receptive to the predictions they were making about a coming Crisis period, and I was interested to see how predictive their theory of the saeculum would be. Thus when 9-11 happened, I thought it might be that "spark", but later thought it was more likely an early warning of a still distant but approaching storm.

As the strange and apparently ominous events of the past half-year have been accruing, I have wanted to re-read The Fourth Turning, but all my rooting in the accessible boxes in the garage came up wanting. So I was anxiously on the lookout for the book as I began the task of making my library as planned in the Chem Geek Princess's old room (now the Guest Room/Library). Thus I was amazed when finally, I found the book and read the page that fell open, and that last, pregnant sentence:

" . . . the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, as trivial as a Tea Party."

When they were writing the book in the mid-90's, Strauss and Howe used these events as examples of the catalyzing spark because they were indeed the sparks that catalyzed the Crisis mood during the Fourth Turnings of one each of the last three Saecula: They identified the Boston Tea Party (1773) as the spark for the Revolutionary War Crisis, the election of 1860 as the catalyst for the Civil War Crisis, and the Crash of '29 as the spark that began the Great Depression-WWII Crisis that ended what they call The Great Power Saeculum.

But from the perspective of this past half-year, it seems that we are entering the Millenial Crisis via sparks pulled from all of these past catalysts. Since September of last year we have experienced a financial crash, a regular but divisive national election (the last of three such thus far), and this spring, tax-protest Tea Parties, the names of which were inspired by that of 1773.

The generations are all in place according to the Strauss-Howe paradigm as well: We have the inner-directed Idealist/Prophet generational archetype (Boomers) entering elderhood, full of fervor and moral certainty; the alienated and pragmatic Reactive/Nomad archetype (Gen Xers) entering mid-life; the outer-directed Civic/Hero archetype entering adulthood ready to be achievers; and just in past decade, a new, and likely Adaptive/Artist generation (Homelanders?) is being born. If these last grow up through a successfully resolved Crisis, they will be protected during the great doings, thus becoming risk-adverse and somewhat conformist in general, as a result of their childhood experience.

The human mind loves to find patterns, and it might be that the Strauss-Howe generational paradigm is just that, except that they provide very good historical evidence of the saecular rhythm in modern Anglo-American history. And now, as a Crisis appears to be catalyzing before our very eyes, the predictive power of the paradigm will be tested. In Generations they say:

"Anyone who claims to possess a vision of the future must present it with due
modesty, since no mortal can possibly forsesee how fate may twist and turn.
Readers who encounter this book fifty years from now will no doubt find [the
predictions it contains] odd in much of [the] detail. But it is not in our purpose
to predict specific events; rather our purpose is to explain how the underlying
dynamic of generational changes will determine which sort of events are most
likely." (p. 15).

Still, that one sentence in The Fourth Turning almost jumped off the page at me in light of the events that are catlyzing the coming Crisis. As I re-read this book, my new place in space and time, and in experience as a leading-edge Gen Xer (and I agree with this placement for me, at least), will likely create more of those "big chill" moments.

Is Atlas Shrugging?

So last summer, as I was commuting to Fanta Se . . . oops, slip of the finger, of course I meant Santa Fe . . .( every Wednesday, I got into the habit of listening to talk radio on the drive. Yep. I have become one of those people; you know the type--one of those bitter persons clinging to G-d and guns. Well, strictly speaking, I have been shooting since I was 12, and being Jewish, well, let's just say we invented G-d a long time before talk radio was even thought of . . . at least by mere mortals.

So on one of the afternoon drives, as I was sitting in what amounted to traffic on the frontage road just off of Cerillos Road, I was listening to one of the talk gurus, and he made a book recommendation. (It's unbelievable, I know, but there are those rare talk radio hosts who actually read). He said, and I quote, "You know, if you haven't already, you really ought to read Atlas Shrugged."

I had read Atlas when I was a teen, but I used a lot of skippibus, as Darwin was wont to call it, and although I had the basic plot, it had been a long time. So I made up my mind to read it, and the Chem Geek Princess, ever happy to find a new book challenge, was ready to join in.

She was a little bit disconcerted when she found out that it was by Ayn Rand, who had written The Fountainhead. The CGP read that book in high school, and she liked Howard Roark quite well, and understood him; but she emphatically did not like the heroine of the story, Dominique. "Mom," she said heatedly, "That woman's self-destructive marriages remind me of some of the girls I knew in high school. And really, if she was in love at first sight with Howard, why did she play that ridiculous game with the hearthstone? How . . . teenybopper can a character be?" Times and young women have certainly changed.

In the end, we agreed to read it and discuss it during our regular weekly coffee hours.
As we read, the Chem Geek Princess was impressed. And I was re-impressed. And on a very different level. There were many things to discuss, and eventually I will blog some of those discussions. However, what was downright disconcerting was how well Ayn Rand seemed to have predicted what was (and is) happening to our country right now. The book was first published in the 1950's, and could well have been written today.

As I read the book, I would turn to the Engineering Geek and say things like: "Sweetie, you've just gotta hear this . . ." and then read a passage aloud to him.
And being the Engineering Geek, soon my desk was littered with newspaper clippings labeled in that neat, all-capital Engineer printing: DEAREST ELIE, DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF THAT BOOK PASSAGE YOU READ?
And it would. In fact, as I began to realize how much so, I began to become very worried about the future of our freedom and our prosperity.

For example, sitting in front of me at this moment is a neatly clipped little article from The Albuquerque Journal: Bottlenecks Slow Grain Transfer.
An AP story from sometime in August, the article says:
"Across the country, from grain elevator to grain elevator, golden wheat and corn are piled in towering mounds, waiting for a rail car to haul them to market . . ."
The article dicusses the outdated and inadequate infrastructure, much in poor repair, that has caused the grain to ". . . sit for a month or more on the ground, exposed to wind, rain and rats." Billions of dollars worth of American cereal grains are lost due to inefficient processing and shipping to get them to market.

Such a problem, but on a much larger scale, is described in Atlas Shrugged, as well as the resultant loss of harvester factories and the ripple affect across the country and their suppliers and the suppliers of the suppliers are all put out of business. In Atlas, the event and its impact on an already faltering economy is described in such detail and with such force that I felt like I had had the wind knocked out of me. I literally had a sick feeling in my kishkes as I thought about the economic loss and hunger such as event would create.

So as the Chem Geek Princess and I read, and the Engineering Geek, inspired by our frequent need to share passages, clipped, my desk was soon piled with what we began to call "the Atlas chronicles." And as the pile grew, we became more and more dismayed. Because Atlas describes a United States that is slowly but surely grinding to a halt by some mysterious malaise. Factories are closing, infrastructure is neglected, supplies become scarce, and people go from being poor to desperate. In the book, the productive people of the country are being systematically looted by those who have produced nothing and yet feel entitled to take wealth away from producers.

As this summer turned into fall, it seemed that the pace of the looting in the real world has increased rapidly, with the crash of the stock market in September, and the failure of the commercial paper to keep business, small and large afloat. Since then, we have nationalized banks, and we are now printing billions of dollars to prop up every large concern that comes to Washington for a handout.

In our family, as we have been preparing for the crisis that is nearly at the door, we have begun to ask each other: "Is Atlas shrugging?"

And every day there are news stories that are alarming in that they characterize the extent to which we have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage, consumed in haste and gone forever.

NOTE: Atlas is a mystery story in which the heroine (a strong, competent woman much more to the Chem Geek Princess's liking) is searching for the inventor of a motor that could run the world, and through this search the reader also finds out what is causing the country to grind to a halt. But the story is much more than that. It is also a moral justification for the liberty of the unfettered mind and for capitalism, which requires and supports liberty. There are some stylistic elements that will surely displease literary critics, such as long speeches by the main characters, but I thought that the story was well constructed, well told, and it kept me up nights thinking. I also think that it provides a framework for understanding the many disparate news items that are so unsettling.

IRD Term II Week V: Endings...

...AND MORE REFLECTIONS ON READING

Yesterday, I finished my summer job with a spirited discussion of a William Sayoran short story, My Cousin Dikran, the Orator from the book My Name is Aram. The discussion was the last of my adult classes. Yesterday, I also did a final discussion of Banner in the Sky for young adults (mostly middle schoolers) and read The Cat in the Hat with 4-5 year-olds. The lessons were similar to ones that I have been teaching all summer, but I had those flashes of "teacher" moments; those times when a teacher realizes that the students have progressed about as far as each one can at that level and that they really don't need the instruction from me anymore. In other words, those moments that a teacher knows that the time has come to move on.

The season is subtly changing here in Sedillo, and in the cool morning mists, one can read fall in the offing. It is time to move on. New adventures and challenges await for me, for Los Pecos Homeschool, and for the family. But more on that later. Now is the time to wrap-up the summer's work, take stock and do the necessary chores of closing down the summer's employment.

Today, as I am puttering about--filling out the exit evaluation for IRD, getting ready to ship books and materials back, thinking about the upcoming year of study--I have also been thinking about what I have learned and accomplished this summer. Although there are many areas where I might have done better at reaching the children and adults that I taught, I do think I have helped almost every student make progress in learning to read and in developing the skills at the right level to read with absorption for pleasure, and to use active reading skills to accomplish reading goals. I do think my summer has been fulfilling in the work I had chosen to do.

I also think I have learned a tremendous amount about teaching reading skills at every level, and I have seen that reading skills need to be taught at every level from beginner to adult, and I have learned how curriculum to teach these skills ought to be developed. I have also learned that many skills can be meaningfully acquired and enhanced in only five weeks (or approximately 10 hours) of direct instruction, with four to five hours of guided practice and independent practice to supplement. I believe that the skills acquired can be sustained and enhanced by continuing practice on the part of the student over the next year. That, of course, is up to the student.

All of what I learned only makes me wonder further at the resistance of government schools to providing such skills instruction at every level. As I have said before, American public education does bring almost every child through the skills instruction up to about the third grade level, which means successful decoding skills. After that, reading instruction as a skill shifts to the use of reading for acquiring content in the various subjects, as if the higher-order skills cannot be taught through direct instruction. But they can be taught, and in the talks I have had with my adult students, the students expressed quite clearly the need for such instruction so that reading becomes a critical skill for thinking, as well as a vehicle of absorption and pleasure.

When I taught high school science, I noticed when I attempted to discuss assigned textbook readings with my students, that although they can successfully decode the words, many of them did not appear to comprehend what they read. I used to say that what they read appeared to "go in one eye and out the other." My experience this summer has not only helped me to learn why this is so, but what to do about it.

I also have learned why certain popular remedies, such as summer reading lists, are not by themselves helpful to the problem. Certainly, a summer reading list seems to address the issue that students are not doing enough reading in school. Well, then, the logic goes, we must make them read in the summer. However, in the schools I have taught at, the summer reading assignment was followed up by a very short discussion and a quiz. There were no extensive book discussions, and no guidance was provided to enhance the reading skills of the students in order to make the summer reading productive. In the eyes of the students, it was simply another hoop to jump through in order to get points towards their grades. It had no other value. How could it be anything else to students who are not fundamentally "readers" in the rich sense?
And to be fair, none of the teachers involved had every really learned how to teach reading in our content fields--despite having paid for courses by that name in order to be certified. So we had no idea how to make the experience more than a hoop to jump through.

If I ever teach high school science again, I would not assign summer reading unless I was willing to gather students over the course of a summer month for skills instruction and book discussions. There I could model for them, and they could model for each other, the type of thinking needed to truly delve into the assigned book. Instead, I think I would assign a book to be read over the course of a semester, and devote one class period each week to reading instruction and discussion so that the assignment would have some meaning for the students.

Most likely, though, I will not be teaching high school science again. Instead I will be likely go on to do research and perhaps teach at the university level. Still, what I have learned this summer will enrich my thinking about the research I am planning. It will also alter how I would teach both undergraduate and graduate classes using the primary literature of the field.

This summer's work has indeed been fruitful on multiple levels for me. And it has provided me with more questions to consider, and more ways to think about my future as a teacher.

Oh! And I am so not from California! I forgot this goal! I did have a lot of fun teaching--especially during the second term, when the specifics of curriculum delivery became more natural to me, and I could focus on more of the meta-aspects of teaching.

IRD Term II Week IV: Book Dreams

Yesterday I finished teaching week four of the IRD late summer term. Tomorrow I begin the last week of my summer job teaching reading skills to children and adults. The week went well--it was one of those flow weeks in teaching, where no problems seemed large, and I had fun with my students in different ways in all my classes. Nothing stood out, the week just smoothly went by. The lessons structure seems automatic to me now, as I approach the end, and so I have much more time to enjoy my students and enjoy, too, instructing them.

Although I am going to be really glad to have weekends back to spend with the Engineering Geek, the Chem Geek Princess, and Boychick (aka N.), I had a dream last night that shows that I am still going to be sad to see this summer teaching gig end. In my dream, I was at the IRD Offices on Ontario Street in the North River Neighborhood of Chicago. And I dreamed that we were having a celebration--a book celebration. The whole town had turned out, the kids and adults all wearing costumes and carrying their favorite book. John Boyd (the director of teaching) took us all on a tour of the crowded streets. We were collecting books and passing out books. As we walked along, I saw Frodo and his Fellowship. Boychick was dressed as Legolas, with long hair and bow. We turned the corner, and I saw Dicken's Pip, and Oliver Twist, and the Pickwicks. Across the street by the Lebanese restaurant, I saw Harry Potter, with Ron and Hermione in tow, all waving wands. We crossed Erie Street, and there was the Chem Geek Princess, carrying a box labeled Schroedinger's Cat. (It's Heinlein!) There was music, and, of course food! And we IRD teachers were working hard, passing out new books and collecting old ones and stacking them on the El Station Steps over Franklin Avenue.

I wonder if part of this dream came from my discussion yesterday with my Albuquerque adult class. We spent the last part of class reading and discussing Dana Gioia's speech On the Importance of Reading, which was published in the June 2006 issue of The Commonwealth. Many of the students were shocked and surprised about the decline of reading in the US and the importance of reading to civic values and American culture. Some were not impressed with Gioia's program, The Big Read. They said it was "lame." I think those who thought so were thinking it was too little, too late, and that education must be changed. (IRD president Paul Copperman did try to reform reading instruction in Americans schools, alas, to no avail). However, even the students who were critical of The Big Read, thought that Albuquerque ought to participate. So they took themselves off through a cloudburst to Starbucks to discuss it further.

Reading Gioia's essay always makes me think about Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451,"the temperature at which paper burns." It is a novel about an American in which the TV screens take up all four walls and are interactive, and in which billboards on the highways get bigger and bigger as the traffic goes by faster and faster. It is an America in which firemen do not put out fires, but rather burn books because the consumers (they are no longer citizens) demanded to be protected against the kind of thinking that reading engenders. In the novel, some people leave the cities and become living books--they can recite an entire book or volume.

Our discussion last night, thoughts of Gioia's article, thoughts of the end of this summer teaching gig; all of these seem to have caused me to have book dreams last night.
I was told that I would not only learn to teach differently, which was a true statement; I was also told that I would be doing important work: The kind of work that would enable me to fulfill my reading passion by sharing it with others. Sometimes, when we are confronted with the brass tacks of our work, we forget the underlying reason for doing it. And then it comes back to us in dreams.

Thinking About Reading and the Brain

I've been thinking a lot about reading this summer, and in talking to others about it, I was given the title of this book:

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by Maryanne Wolfe, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2007.


Disclaimer: Reading one book does not an expert make! Although I am studying neuropsychology, and I do have a biological sciences background and recent coursework in neurobiology, most of my technical reading thus far has been in general neurobiology, general neurophysiology, and child psychopathology; my interest in these areas has been mainly about differences in visual processing found in children with autism, and also in certain other populations, including a sub-set of gifted children. I have gotten interested in the neuropsychology of reading because I am teaching reading this summer using a unique methodology developed by the Institute of Reading Development. My background helps me understand this book a little differently than the lay reader might, but I claim no expertise in this area. I have downloaded some of the source research studies described in this book, but I have not yet read them. Wolf and her colleagues are the true experts and I urge you to read this book and go beyond it to get the full implications of this work.

Whew! I just had to say that because what I am about to say is personal and speculative and is no way to be construed as having come down from Sinai!

This book is really three discourses in one. The first is about the development of writing and reading as a human cultural technology, and the implications thereof for changes in the connections between relatively fixed structures in the human brain that have not been modified for reading. The second is about the development of reading skills for individuals in literate cultures, how it differs across languages, and the implications of reading for the individual's brain and self. The third is about what may be going on in the brains of those for whom reading does not develop in the expected ways, those who have dyslexia.

All three discourses are interesting and well-explained, and they are all related to the others in complex ways. It is not easy to tease them apart. For example, the development of writing and reading as a cultural technology at the beginning of history (literally!) six thousand years ago, has made changes in neural connections in literate brains that have fascinating implications for the development of each individual reader and has also created within literate individuals a different mode of thinking and self-understanding from those who are not literate. In turn, intriguing new neurobiological discoveries about dyslexia, built on the hypotheses of pioneers such as Orton, demonstrate that reading is not natural to the human brain; rather it relies on older structures and abilities that are useful for other, more innate tasks. Wolf is very good at teasing these stories apart while maintaining the connections among them, and treats the reader to passages about meaning that are quite beautifully written.

I was most interested in Wolf's discussion of the development of the expert reader. When a child first begins to read, certain neural connections begin to form in the temporal-parietal regions of the brain that create associations among nearby primary and auditory centers, primary visual centers in the occipital lobe, and the language centers in the parietal lobe and frontal lobes. Normally, these connections are primarily developed in the left hemisphere, which also provides the exquisite timing necessary for fluency, although some right hemispheric involvement also occurs, the extent of which depends on the language and writing system being read. As the child works on decoding, his brain recruits a great number of neural connections, because the child is a novice. A great deal of gray matter, white matter and energy are required in this laborious process. Feed your children often and well, and give them lots of encouragement through this stage!

When fluent reading develops, more and more of the associations necessary to decoding and parsing written words to extract meaning become automatized, and fewer neurons and neural systems are needed for the task. As reading becomes automatic, the number of neurons needed for the mechanics of it become fewer, and more brain "space" is freed up for the meta-cognitive work that makes reading so valuable and pleasurable. What is really interesting is that these meta-cognitive tasks are done in the right hemisphere, where concepts, patterns, and meaning are associated with the reader's previous experience. Connections are therefore made across the hemispheres and reading becomes an internal dialogue between the reader and his experiences and the words written on the page. This is what makes reading a transcendent experience that creates for the reader the ability to bring herself whole--mind, heart, and soul--into the mind of another, or into wholly imaginary worlds that become real through the act of reading.

Like everything learned, reading does change our brains. The brain is composed of structures that are relatively stable; that is they are much the same in a modern literate person as they were in our Cro Magnon ancestors forty thousand years ago. However, the connections between these structures do change with the development of expert reading, and the weaving together of dedicated neural systems means that the literate person gains a new way of thinking that is not available to the non-reader.

There is a great deal of concern, especially among those of us who could not live without the meta-cognitions that reading has given us, about the decline of reading in American society, in favor of the more completely visual information technologies now developing. And although we know we cannot turn back the clock, we are concerned because we know that the assimilation of vast amounts of information is not equivalent to the ability to think meta-cognitively, reflectively, in the way of an expert reader.

One valid reason for this concern relates back to the issue of timing in the firing of neurons, which primarily developed in the language centers of the left hemisphere for the purpose of sequences. There are "delay neurons" whose job is to slow down neural firing, allowing time for sequencing and decision. Reading, which requires exquisite timing for fluency, supports in turn, time for contemplation and association with experience by the reader. It is not at all clear that the more graphic, iconic nature of the internet will do the same.

From my IRD reading teacher training, I learned that the real bottleneck for developing readers occurs between the stage where the child learns decoding and basic fluency skills, and the stage where the child reads enough to develop the fluency and comprehension required to achieve identification and absorption in works of literary fiction. Almost all American children achieve the first, and thus are not technically illiterate. Fewer and fewer achieve the second. My training manual says the following"

"The reason is straightforward enough: many children don't do enough reading in chapter books...for identification and absorption to become automatic...The reasons can probably be grouped into three main categories. First there is not general, widespread acceptance or understanding on the central importance of Stage 3 goals (i.e. fluency and comprehension enough to support identification and absorption. EHL) and consequently, most schools require an inadequate amount of reading in chapter books... (I)nstead, school reading often focuses on short pieces or excerpts....Second, reading has a hard time competing with electronic media...And third, children who achieve fluency in chapter books late in elemetary school have little opportunity to catch the reading bug before being caught up in all the competing demands of the middle school years."
--Version SU 08 1.5--4/14/08, Institute of Reading Development

In answer to Lisa's question, posed in the comments here, I think that given what we know about reading and the brain at this time, it would be a good idea to limit use of the internet as an educational tool, and to limit also the use of electronic media for entertainment, at least until a child has achieved the Stage 3 goals and can read with identification and absorption in chapter books. In this way we can ensure that the vast majority of kids achieve the neural connections necessary for the kind of associational thinking and reflection that are the gift of the expert reader. Then the internet can become a tool for the creation of ever more diverse associations and the development of new ways of thinking that do not displace those acquired through reading development.

However, we must also continue to remind ourselves that for students with dyslexia, who are using different neural pathways to develop reading, all bets are off. They may need and benefit from technology in ways that do not benefit the majority of our students. But that would be another blog!

I'm closing with Maryanne Wolf's version of Hemmingway's "one true sentence," from her conclusion to Chapter 6: The Unending Story of Reading Development in Proust and the Squid:

"The end of reading development doesn't exist; the unending story of reading moves ever forward, leaving the eye, the tongue, the word, the author for a new place from which the "truth breaks forth, fresh and green," changing the brain and the reader every time."

May her words whet your reading appetite. Go forth and read great books!

IRD: Recommendations for the Adult Booklist

One of the benefits for students and/or their parents who take the IRD summer reading classes is a booklist for each level to provide some of the best books for reading for absorption and pleasure. The one level that does not get such a list is the adult speedreading course. This year, the company has asked teachers to make a list of books in several categories for a forthcoming adult level book list. This list will be unique because it contains not only works of classical and contemporary fiction, but will also have non-fiction categories.

I have been working on my list as requested, and here are some books that I have read that I believe belong on such a list. I don't know if it was wanted, but I included a short annotation about each book.

I thought readers of my blog would be interested in some of these books, too!
I am still working on the list and have not gotten to other genres, so expect updates in the coming weeks.

GENERAL INTEREST NON-FICTION

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollen

This book is a fascinating read that brings us from the farm, field or garden to the table for four different kinds of meals. In the process, readers learn about modern agribusiness and monocultures, nutritional science, what "organic" does not mean in the common parlance, and the ethics of eating meat and hunting. The book is well written and enjoyable reading.


Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
by Brian Doherty

This book is an excursion through the history and people of a modern, radical political movement by a senior editor for Reason. Though a "fringe" group in the eyes of the dominant political parties, the Libertarian movement has had a surprising effect on recent politics in the United States. Like many such movements, this one is filled with fascinating and eccentric people who have uncommon interests. For example the founders of the L-5 Society for Space Colonization and the founder of the X-Prize for private spaceship design are all libertarian. This book is well written, and is in turn both serious and humorous in style. It's absorbing and enjoyable.

Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom by Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath

As per the title, this is an account of the demise of classical learning at the university level. It is also a discussion of important changes in university education brought about by the wholesale acceptance of post-modernism as critical thought in the arts, humanities and education departments. It is also a passionate argument for the eternal verity of beauty, ethics and wisdom brought about by the Greeks that are central to Western culture and tradition, and the need to teach them to each generation of scholars in the universities of the West. This book is both erudite and entertaining. Anyone who has had experience or exposure to the modern university will be nodding their heads in agreement at much of what is written here. The authors have included a booklist for the interested layman entitled: 'When All We Can Do is Read,' as well as notes for those who wish to pursue the topic on a more scholarly level.

SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY

Three Hainish Novels (also published as Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions) by Ursula K. LeGuin

These are some of LeGuin's best works. The story woven through the three novellas is that of the developing ability to communicate instantaneously across time and space using a new technology, and from mind to mind using a unique human sense first discovered on the world of the first novella, Rocannon's world. In her evocative prose, LeGuin explores the themes of exile and return, friendship and the rejection of otherness, and the spirituality of human freedom and choice. This book was so absorbing and so beautiful that I felt a sudden sense of loss when I finished and had to rejoin the everyday world on earth.

Other recommended sci-fi by LeGuin: The Telling, Four Ways of Forgiveness, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossed.

He, She, and It
by Marge Piercy

This novel is two stories interwoven together. One is a re-telling of the creation of the Golem of Prague by the Maharal, a European Jewish story that inspired such works as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. The second story is of a near-future dystopia in which plague and environmental crisis have rendered earth as a world ruled by corporations, and free cities survive by selling proprietary knowledge and skills to them. The story is about the creation of an android who has human capacities as a weapon. The book explores the theme of what it means to be human through such motifs as gender, technology, marriage, parenthood, slavery, freedom, and spirituality. The writing is rich and the story is absorbing.

Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper

This is the story of a choice for the fate of the earth told through the images of classic fairy tales. Time travel, space travel and magic are all devices through which the story is told and a mystery is solved. Themes include life and death, beauty and terror, spirituality and evil. The location of the repository of earth's life forms, knowledge and wisdom is found in a very surprising place; this absorbing story has implications for all of us in all times and places.

GENERAL INTEREST SCIENCE WRITING

The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Normal Doige, MD

This is a well written account of recent discoveries about neuroplasticity told through accounts of people with brain injuries and diseases, and the detective work of neuroscientists over the past 100 years who overturned the paradigm of the unchangeable brain. It is well written with clear scientific explanations rendered into layman's terms.


Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolfe

This popularization of the neuroscience and cultural history of reading expounds on three subjects: the cultural and neurobiological aspects of the development of writing and reading in human history; the neurobiology, methodologies, and culture of reading development in contemorary literate societies; and what happens when the brain cannot learn to read in the usual ways, the neurobiology of dyslexia. This is written for lay readers and explanations are well rendered for this purpose. Wolf is passionate about the problems in the culture of reading brought about by popular educational trends, and she draws parallels between the concerns of the Greeks (especially Plato) during the transition to alphabetic writing and reading and comtemporary concerns about the transition to digitally codified information. Very interesting and well done, and Wolf includes notes for the scientists among the general readers.

The Search for Longitude by Dava Sobel

This is an account of how the problem of calculating longitude for navigation was solved and why it took unil the late 18th century to solve it. As part of the problem the reader is brought on a journey through such subjects as the measurement of time, astronomy, and the art of navigation at sea. This is a fascinating and encouraging look at human ingenuity in the face of a great scientific problem. Sobel tells the story well!

Go forth and read great books!

IRD Term II Week II: The Engineering Geek Has an Epiphany!

Yesterday, I arrived home at 8 PM after completing the second week of the second term.
Things are going well and I am into a teaching routine now, though I was quite tired from the long week just past, in which I had taught an extra day as a substitute. I also think I need new shoes--the really comfortable sandals I bought in May are now worn out; I am on my feet most of the hours that I teach. I may get five minutes to inhale half-a sandwich and sit down between classes. I think this is the one aspect of IRD that I would change: A dedicated lunch period of 1/2 hour would make the days less physically and mentally stressful. Anyway, this afternoon I will hie myself off the Shoes On a Shoestring to see what they've got!

Last term I had no adult classes assigned to me, but this term I have two.
I am really enjoying helping adults improve their reading and comprehension. In the adult classes, we focus mainly on non-fiction and only do some fiction in the last week of the course. These past two weeks we have been reading Dibs: In Search of Self by Dr. Virginia Axeline. This is an excellent book in it's own right. Virginia Axeline is credited with inventing Play Therapy for the purpose of helping psychologically troubled kids. In this book she tells the story of her interactions with a highly gifted young boy who does not interact with the world. In our discussions of the book in both classes, we have touched on the ideas of respect for children as people, how a child's therapy can heal the family, and also the need not to make snap judgements about a person's abilities and development.
This has been very interesting to me, and the insights from our discussions have given me new insights into my third career--that of a neurospychologist.

Within the IRD curriculum, however, we are using Dibs not only to discuss but to develop improved reading skills and comprehension strategies for adults so that they may take active control of their reading. Active control here means that adults consider their purpose for the reading that they are doing and adjust their strategies accordingly in order to achieve the greatest reading efficiency and also take pleasure from all their reading. What is interesting about teaching adults is that, although they generally do not resist the strategies we teach to the point of refusal, they do complain--vociferously--about them because the strategies feel awkward after a lifetime of poor reading strategies and habits. This is particularly true of the older students. And the engineers.

The Engineering Geek is taking my Wednesday evening class in Santa Fe. He has been complaining off and on over the six years of our marriage about how difficult reading is for him and how unpleasurable it is as a consequence. A few years ago, when I first matriculated for my Special Education MA, I received a flyer from UNM Continuing Ed for a speed reading class. (It was the IRD program, though I did not know anything about it at the time). Being a very fast reader with many academic successes under my belt, I felt no need to take such a class, so I put the flyer in the recycle. The Engineering Geek rescued it (he throws nothing away) and carried it around for the entire summer, but did nothing about it. (This is, I have learned, typical for him. Every project not involved with his work starts out this way. Eventually, I make things happen and he grumbles and then is grateful. Sigh. A woman's work...). So this summer when he learned about my schedule and was fretting about my driving home from Santa Fe on the back roads late at night, I suggested that he take the adult class there and make the drive with me. He grumbled about the cost a little bit, but when I got him a discount, he agreed.

At the first class I discovered one reason that reading was so difficult for him. He reads very slowly. Reading a book slowly is like watching Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies in slow motion: it allows the mind to wander. A slow reader ends up losing the thread of the story or explanation, and must re-read and re-read in order to remember what was read. But the adult class is a Speed Reading class. So the Engineering Geek was taught the techniques to improve reading speed. I noticed that he was having trouble with them; his technique was jerky, and it appeared that he was still re-reading. I was not sure if he was not comprehending or if he did comprehend but didn't realize it. (This can happen as one learns speed reading). So I listened to him and his partner as they retold what they had just read. The Engineering Geek was having great difficulty finding the words he wanted, which slowed him down and interfered with memory. I was planning of having a conversation with him about it after we did a group discussion

Here is what I thought was going on. Engineers are visual thinkers, and many of them have what Cheri Florance calls Maverick Minds. That is, the visual organization of their thinking is strong that they do not learn to switch to verbal strategies when they are needed. Mavericks rely so heavily on visual memory and cognition that they do not develop the verbal memory needed for certain tasks very effectively. But reading is a primarily verbal skill, even though the visual system is used for information intake. So, I was planning to discuss this with the Engineering Geek in order to determine if this interference was a problem. (This can be a big problem for males, because their verbal centers tend to be far more lateralized in the brain than those of females. Also, the male corpus collosum--the fibers that carry information across hemispheres--is smaller than that of females. It appear that females are far better "wired" for verbal thinking than males).

So, as I said, I was going to bring this up with the Geek. But when I approached him during the next independent reading session, I noticed that his speed reading technique was much smoother, and at the next timing I noticed that his time had doubled. So I recorded the time, expressed my satisfaction to him, and moved on. Why mess with success?

Later, as we were driving south on NM 14, the Engineering Geek said: "Tonight, I've had an epiphany!" He went on to explain that he had spent years trying not to sub-vocalize while he was reading. Apparently, a teacher had told him that this was the wrong way to read! (I am endlessly amazed at the strange ideas that teachers cotton onto and refuse to let go).
Evidently, he took this to heart and began to try to read without engaging the verbal centers of his brain. From that time forward, he became a slow reader, endlessly re-reading to try to comprehend.

I explained to the Geek that readers generally either hear the words in their heads or sub-vocalize as they read. There are a few people, dyslexics among them, that do not, but that this is somewhat rare. I also explained that when people who hear the words in their heads only are practicing speed reading, often they begin to sub-vocalize again for a while, until their faster speeds become comfortable and normal. Then they go back to hearing the words in their heads. What I suspect happened to create the Engineering Geek's epiphany was that when I was explaining why we did structured discussions (adults complain about this quite a bit) I said that we want to verbalize what was just read in order to organize it in memory, and that the structure provides a framework of synaptic associations so that the information read was more easily recalled. The Engineering Geek heard that and associated it with what he'd been told about not sub-vocalizing while reading. He stopped trying to interfere with this, and he found he was comprehending what he read better.

This sparked a lively discussion where the Geek spent the better part of the drive home "data mining" my brain for what I knew about the neuroscience behind reading. I know a little from my MA in Special Ed, and I can infer more from my current studies in Neurobiology. But I began to realize that there are big gaps in my knowledge since I have not studied the topic directly.

So naturally, I began asking around. My sister Madge's son D. has dyslexia, though the schools refused to acknowledge it as such. She listened to my ideas and said, "You'd love this book I just finished..."

I can see that I am embarking on a new reading and research blitz. Thank goodness for Amazon! The UPS Orange Route driver (who knows me by name) should be winding his way up our mountain to deliver Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain sometime today. In anticipation I read the Epilogue of Radicals for Capitalism this morning!

Stay tuned! There is definitely more to come...

The 'Right Book at the Right Time' Reading Blitz

I have a problem. I admit it.

I have not been very good at keeping up with our reading lists on this blog. People here tend to read more than one book at once, for one thing. And they finish books and start them with a good deal more regularity than I change the reading list.

So I have a problem.
But it's a nice problem to have!

And another nice thing that happens with our reading occasionally is serendipity! You know, when you find exactly the right book--the one you were longing for--at exactly the right time. And you find it even though you never even knew that such a book existed.

I had that happen the other day. I was surfing Amazon, looking for some Peterson's guides that N. needs for his ongoing Kamana II studies. And there it was! First in the "recommended for you" list. The perfect book. Exactly what I needed. Exactly when I needed it.

A Wild Faith:

Jewish Ways into Wilderness,

Wilderness Ways into Judaism

by Rabbi Mike Comins, Founder of Torah Trek

I ordered it. Immediately. Without even reading the reviews. For some obscure reason, I had it shipped quickly. At the time I ordered it, I knew I wanted to read it because I am working on a presentation for the National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC) annual conference. The presentation is called:

I am the Coyote, I am the Deer:

Reaching for Global Connections Through Wilderness Awareness

I am doing the presentation as part of the Global Awareness Strand of NAGC. It is about our experience in developing empathy, ecological values and concern for justice in the larger world through N.'s wilderness studies and his wildlife rescue service projects. I wrote the proposal last April and it was accepted in May. It will be the first time I give a presentation for a national audience.

Gifted kids with AS do seem to have a strong sense of justice and fairness on the grand scale, but often do not have the empathy to apply this in more concrete situations. By finding a way to develop empathic thinking and acting, the AS kid not only learns content, but also the process of how to direct that sense of justice to work in their world, expanding their horizons and teaching empathy and the actions that show it.

The book arrived the other day. And itbecame more serendipidous at that moment, because I was in the middle of pondering why it is that, in modern Judaism, wilderness awareness is not generally viewed as an important value. After all, when I read the psalms, when I think about the desert experience, when I think about the worry that the ancient Israelites had about losing their direct connection to G-d when they ceased being desert wanderers and settled down in towns, then it seems odd that wilderness awareness is not felt to be a primary value. I know, I know, there are some good historical reasons for the loss of that sense of oneness with nature among the Jewish people. But still.

But when the book arrived I was actually feeling a mite annoyed about this lack of wilderness awareness among perfectly worthy Jews. I felt chastized because N.'s mitzvah projects consistently sound the same theme: ecology, the welfare of animals, and wilderness preservation. He just doesn't seem to get excited about raising money for more directly "Jewish" causes whose headquarters are located in Los Angeles or New York. And then "Brown" came pulling up and I had the book in my hands! Coincidence? Or G-d's way of remaining anonymous? Nu? Who knows. But I'll take it as the proverbial two-by-four.

I eagerly thumbed through the pages, as I like to do with an exciting new book, reading bits here and there, to find out what lies ahead when I settle down to the business of actually reading it page by page. And I read:

"Entering wilderness to experience G-d's presence is not an experience taken seriously by the major Jewish institutions in America or elsewhere..." (p. 4)

Then I read:

"...I have learned: most Jews who love wilderness know little of Judaism, and committed Jews know little of wilderness." (p. 5)

And finally I read:

"In the course of this book, we shall see how wilderness leads to Judaism...(and) conversely, how Judaism leads us to the wilderness--to absorb wilderness in deeper, more vibrant ways."

This was definitely a serendipity kind of moment. As they say in Brooklyn, "the tears stood in my eyes." The answer to my pondering, here in my hands. Ordered by me for a different reason, before the pondering even began. An everyday sort of miracle.

Another nice reading happening at our house is what we call a reading "blitz." Every now and then, we all get interested in reading as much as we can find about a certain topic or by a certain author. Often, we have read some of the books before, but we feel a real need to read them again.

Currently, we are having a Tom Brown, Jr. reading blitz. We have taken up reading his books. We have ordered some that are only available second hand. We have reserved some that we had read previously from the library. We went digging through boxes to find ones read long ago, that were packed for the move last year and not yet unpacked.

I think that this reading blitz was inspired by N.'s lively tales of his experiences at the Coyote Tracks experience. On the first night, Jon Young, who runs the Wilderness Awareness School, and who was taught by Tom Brown, Jr. spent an hour or so around the campfire, telling stories about how he met and was taught by Tom. Nate re-told the stories to us around the Shabbat table and when we were driving and when we were sitting out on the porch listening to the crickets. And that whet our appetites to re-read Tom's wisdom, and venture into writings by him that are new to us.

During reading blitzes, we tend to have lots of silence as we lounge about the living room, or sit at table or in our Andirondack rockers on the porch, turning pages. And then someone will say, "Oh, listen to this!" And that person then reads a profound paragraph or two, after which there is thoughtful silence often followed by lively conversation. During reading blitzes, the rule about not bringing books to the dinner table (books are always allowed at breakfast and lunch) is mainly honored in the breach.

Much learning happens by this informal reading and sharing. I think it is fair to say that I have learned more and enjoyed it more than in any class or reading group in which we have followed a set schedule and series of questions. I think I can speak for N. and Bruce and MLC about this as well. Anyway, we have fun! High energy, waving hands, and sparkling eyes kind of fun. The jokes! The stories! The arguments! We have great fun.

And oddly enough, N. just gave me another Tom Brown, Jr. book obtained at Page One, Too--a used bookstore. It's called Awakening Spirits. It is about the deep spiritual nature of the wilderness awareness teachings that Grandfather Stalking Wolf taught to Tom and Rick.

What's that sound I hear? Another two-by-four swishing through the air?

Serendipity?

Nu? I think that the Eternal has become the 'Master of the Obvious!'

My Lips Are Sealed

I finished the book. I will not reveal the ending.

We did not end up going to the midnight release EVENT for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. MLC and I decided that we would have a nice quiet Shabbat dinner with Bruce and then retire early so that we could pick up the books in the morning for a full day of reading pleasure.

Above: D., T., and N. picking up their books at a bookstore in Illinois. The three cousins caused no mayhem yesterday. They were too busy reading.

We got our books about 9:30 AM MDT and were ensconced in "comfy" chairs near the Seattle's Best counter with lattes in hand by 10 AM. I even had them put carmel in my latte. We were making our own morning release party. We had dropped Bruce off at the Hardware store, so we figured we had about an hour's reading pleasure. I got four chapters read before Bruce called.

We came home, had some lunch, and I settled in my red leather chair in the sitting room with some chocolate and tea and propped my feet up on the hassock. And I did not move again for about four hours. By then I was half-way through the book. I knew I was not following my plan to read a few chapters at a time, but I could not help myself. I could not put the book down! It had a spell on me!

After a short break to walk the dogs, I was back in my chair and I finished the book at about 10 PM. And then I read the first chapter aloud to Bruce. It was that good!

Today I have been wandering about in that post-book mixture of euphoria and sadness. You know the feeling--you've been in an alternate reality, a different world and you have grown to know and love the characters. They have become real. And now you have to re-enter your own world. So you are stuck between worlds for a while. A really good book just does that to me. This morning I re-read different parts, looking closely for the foreshadowing and literary allusions that will allow me to discuss the book. But not here. Not yet. My lips are sealed.

I think I will go back and re-read this book. Soon. That is how powerful it is.

Summer Reading: The Joy of Frequent Library Trips

I mentioned a few weeks ago that N. has gotten excited about the Bernalillo Public Library System's summer reading program.

We are finding ourselves going to the library several times a week because they dole out 1 ten-hour reading card at a time to be filled out and turned in. N. has been reading between 20 and 30 hours a week now, and has been reading a variety of genres. Part of the reason is that we are not doing any major projects for the summer. And part of the reason is that each 10-hour card he turns in is entered into a drawing for a new techno-gadget of some kind. I-Pod? SPS? I don't remember--but something like that.

And I have expanded my reading as well.

Part of the reason is that when I am done with the UNM semester, I have time to read more for pleasure. And part of the reason is that I have discovered that the library has a summer reading program for adults as well! And the grand prize in the drawing is two round-trip tickets to anywhere Southwest Airlines flies. I read anyway. Might as well try for the trip.

So we are driving the eight miles to the library at least three times a week.

My philosophy for reading for my kids has always been simple. They should read real books that interest them and plenty of those! I eschew booklists, workbooks, vocabulary worksheets, phonics drills--or anything else that would convince them that reading is a means to some other end. Reading for readings sake! That's my motto.

So reading is not a "subject" in my house.

And yet everybody reads most of the time. We read for pleasure and information.

We read indoors, outdoors, sitting at the breakfast table, and sprawled out on the floor. And we read in the car (not the driver, of course), at the bookstore, at the library and under trees at the park. We read aloud to each other and silently. A dinner conversation often starts with, "By the way, I read today that..."

That big, expensive TV set? It gets used. For Netflix. Maybe once or twice a week.

It would be nice to win the drawing, of course...

But we'll read anyway.

We are a family of readers. A nice family.

The only problem is that I have trouble keeping the booklist up to date on this blog...