reading

My Experience With Speed Reading

A friend recently asked me if I had ever tried speed reading. He, like most book people I know, is bowing under the weight of the books he wants to read, and the crushing knowledge that we’ll never get to all of them. A few years ago I had seen an infomercial of some bald [...]

October 19, 2010 READ MORE →

10 Great Short Stories And Essays About All Kinds Of Things

1. The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper by Mark Twain Mark Twain is nearly always funny, but never more so, in my opinion, than when he’s talking about writing he doesn’t like. Cooper wrote Last Of The Mohicans and The Leatherstocking Tales. Whether you’ve read those (or love them) doesn’t matter–this is the best [...]

May 31, 2010 READ MORE →

A Reading Project For Lunatics – Join Me!

I am ready to formally embark on a reading adventure I’ve been contemplating for a couple of years now. One thing was always lacking: accountability. Now I have you to keep me honest. Here’s the challenge: Read one book for every number in the Dewey Decimal Classification System. If you walk into a library and [...]

May 19, 2010 READ MORE →

Poll: One Book You Loved, One Book You Hated

About a year and a half ago, I led a book-talk at work called “What Not To Read.” Each of us brought a book that we had hated. Then we tried to talk everyone else out of reading it. Some of us had finished our book, some had quit much earlier. It was fun. And [...]

April 30, 2010 READ MORE →

The Secret Weapon To Overcoming Bad Habits – Guest Post by Bamboo Forest

By Bamboo Forest While knowledge is necessary to overcome any bad habit, it’s by no means enough. In fact, we’ve all had experiences where we know something isn’t good for us, but do it anyways. So if you have a stubborn habit of any kind that you’ve had difficulty kicking, I can’t recommend enough that you add [...]

March 20, 2010 READ MORE →

How I Learned To Love Reading And You Can Too – Guest Post by Eric Watermolen

by Eric Watermolen I love to learn, but I used to hate reading. Maybe it was all the boring reading assignments back in high school. Maybe it was the books I was forced to read and report on every detail of plot, theme, setting… Maybe it was a lack of interest. Maybe it was because [...]

March 18, 2010 READ MORE →

Three Brushes With Death Related To My Blogging

1. I was menaced by Frisbee boys in Monterey 2. My interview with Teen Wolf 3. Here’s the deal: I am wasting away from not recommending books to people. Only you can intervene. Please help! Tell me a subject that you are interested in and specify non-fiction or fiction. I will do my best to [...]

February 18, 2010 READ MORE →

The Need To Read – Awkward Boy Week Rolls On

“Do you really want to check this out?” asked the bookmobile driver. I looked at the students behind me and nodded. “Yes,” I hissed. “Hurry up.” The library was about 13 miles away from our house. I could usually gauge how many books it would take to get me through a long weekend, but not [...]

February 3, 2010 READ MORE →

Poll: Is Reading Something “Bad” Better Than Reading Nothing?

We’re going to tackle this question by pretending to examine two camps of literary opinion. The Harold Bloom Crowd Bloom is an eminent literary critic who wants people to read the classics. He feels that many or most universities are no longer teaching Literature with a capital L. Stories work better for this explanation. When [...]

August 21, 2009 READ MORE →