How to keep a reading journal and how reading is connected to learning about one’s self…
A Reading Journal 🔗
To start a reading journal, “The Well-Educated Mind” by Susan Wise Bauer suggests the following (paraphrased):
- Invest in a journal.
- Jot down notes and write brief summaries.
- Read an entire chapter once without stopping. If any particular ideas, phrases, or sentences strike you, go ahead and jot them down.
- Summarize each section (if there are sections).
- Write down your reactions—how you “read” yourself in what you’re reading.
Do you agree or disagree?
I’m trying this out to help me read and understand my material best. In 8th grade, we kept track of how many books we read in a semester. So, I read a lot, but I also ended up cultivating a talent for finishing books as quickly as possible. Deep and thoughtful reading was something I consciously avoided.
From How Proust Can Change Your Life 🔗
In 12th grade, my English teacher suggested reading Alain de Botton’s “How Proust Can Change Your Life.” I finally picked it up this week. While I haven’t finished it, I am enamored with the following quote:
In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.
Proust’s idea of reading as a way of understanding ourselves applies to all media: not just written media. I’ve been absorbing information from as many sources as I can recently, taking a special interest in learning, productivity, expertise, and emotions.
The media that has resonated with me and energized me recently has focused on developing a praxis of reflection that will help me be my most authentic self (note: I did not say my best self). The most challenging, but engaging media has peered into the darkest corners of my soul that I rarely look at and make me cringe: my privilege, my obsessive intellect, my fragile self-worth, my shame.
My Reading Journal 🔗
My reading journal now includes at least a brief mention of how my readings help me “read” (find patterns and meaning in) myself.
My most recent note 🔗
Brené Brown, “Daring Greatly,” writes “What we know matters, but who we are matters more.” I believe her, but it also scares me because, although I don’t know as much as I’d like, at least I know what I know. I don’t have the first clue about who I am. All this time I’ve spent trying to improve myself, I didn’t even realize I don’t know very much about who I am. It scares me, but I feel that having identified a gap in my knowledge, I now have an attainable goal.
Questions for Reflection 🔗
- What have you been reading (or watching) lately?
- Are you reading (or watching) closely?
- How has it informed your understanding of who you are?
Changelog 🔗
- 2021-03-14: Added a description.
- 2021-03-13: Organized with headers. Semantic formatting.
- 2017-07-25: Created.