An online commonplace book
Hogsmeade looked like a Christmas card; the little thatched cottages and shops were all covered in a layer of crisp snow; there were holly wreaths on the doors and strings of enchanted candles hanging in the trees.
Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for reading.
Below is the list of the books that most shaped C.S. Lewis’s world view. Originally published in the Christian Century, but captured here from Jason M. Baxter‘s The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind:
George MacDonald’s Phantastes stands out. The subtitle is: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women. I’ve never read it, but an entire book on Faeries, written by a Christian Congregational minister?
The sheer intellectual power of these authors is striking. I don’t think anyone of them were only writers. Maybe Virgil.
Taking a deeper look we learn Arthur James Balfour was a statesman and Prime Minister.
Charles Williams wrote poems, novels, and plays, but was also a theologian and literary critic. “Inklings” member too.
Rudolf Otto was a theologian, philosopher, and scholar.
Boethius? Boethius was a Roman senator, consul, historian, philosopher, Saint, and Martyr.
Intellectual titans, the lot of them.
University of Toronto professor Alexandra Ghostafson shares her tips for reading philosophy. They’re superb tips for reading anything really.
Download the pdf here.
Starting out, read twice. Read once quickly to get the gist of the paper, and once more slowly to get the details. This can be time consuming, but it still takes less time than trying to both orient yourself and get all the details in the first pass!
Take reading notes. During the first pass, make notes for yourself in the margin of the paper. Point out places you want to pay closer attention to on the second go, and highlight sections that seem especially important. After this first pass, you might want to write down initial impression or questions for yourself to answer after your second read–these might be about what the author is doing in a certain section, what a certain term means, etc.
Find the argument. On the second pass, you might start with finding the author’s conclusion, or what it is they are arguing for. Once you’ve found what they are arguing for, read the paper from start to finish looking for premises—these are reasons that the author gives for accepting their conclusion. Make note of where they are in the paper, writing down page numbers. The premises together with the conclusion make up the author’s argument.
Rewrite the argument. Once you’ve reread the paper and have found the author’s argument, try to paraphrase it. Writing it down in your own words will help you think about what the author is saying and whether it seems plausible to you.
Write down your thoughts. If you are able to answer any of the questions you wrote for yourself after your first reading, do so. Do you have any new questions? Write them down! These questions might have more depth to them than before-for instance, are there any premises that seem especially convincing or unconvincing? Why? Are there any background presuppositions that the author seems to be committed to? What are they and why does the author hold them? Your questions also might not be philosophical, but methodological: why does the author do what she does in section X? Not all your questions have to be ‘deep’, however-it’s perfectly fine to ask what an author’s conclusion is if you can’t find it, or what the purpose of reading this paper is! Whatever your questions or impressions, write them down.
Bring the material and your notes to class. Bring the paper and what you wrote down about it with you to class! Asking a question that you wrote down when you read the material helps take off some of the pressure of coming up with a question on the spot. Plus, if someone else has your same question, class discussion may help you answer it! And again, bring the paper with you, too-having the paper to refer to will help facilitate class discussion and your own understanding.
Revisit the paper. After class, you might want to revisit the paper or the question you wrote down about it. Has your impression remained the same? Have you answered all your questions? Do you have new ones? Keep going!
Rewriting the argument in your own words is a powerful practice. In his book, How to Take Smart Notes, Sönke Ahren’s also highlights the value of “translating” a text into your own words:
We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words. By doing this, we not only get a better sense of our ability to understand, but also increase our ability to clearly and concisely express our understanding – which in return helps to grasp ideas more quickly.
Ahren, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Sönke Ahren, 2017. (see page 54)
Twitter isn’t all terrible. Recently rabbi, poet, and podcaster, Zohar Atkins posted a thread of his reflections on the Great Books.
He begins with the question: “What makes for a Great Book? And how should you approach one?”
A great list of the Great Books can be found on the St. John’s College Great Books curriculum page. Many of the titles are intimidating. Like Herodotus’ Histories, and Antoine Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry. But one shouldn’t avoid the intimidating.
There are surprises too. Works like Benjamin Franklin’s Excerpt from several letters to Peter Collinson on the nature of electricity” and Alfred Hitchcock, Selected movies.
Reading one intimidating text, and one surprising text, could be an optimal entry point.
From Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Two solid paragraphs from Gordon S. Wood on Thomas Jefferson’s endless curiosity.
He was interested in more things and knew about more things than any other American. When he was abroad he traveled to more varied places in Europe than Adam’s ever did, and kept a detailed record of all that he had seen, especially of the many vineyards he visited.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 10
Not sure how one measures that Jefferson was interested in more things, and knew more things than any other American, but I trust Mr. Wood here. Also, Jefferson’s record keeping is legendary.
He amassed nearly seven thousand books and consulted them constantly; he wanted both his library and his mind to embrace virtually all of human knowledge, and he came as close to that embrace as an eighteenth century American could. Every aspect of natural history and science fascinated him.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 10, 11
It wasn’t enough that Thomas Jefferson owned seven thousand books. He consulted them regularly.
He knew about flowers, plants, birds, and animals, and he had a passion for all facets of agriculture. He had a fascination for meteorology, archaeology, and the origins of the American Indians. He loved mathematics and sought to apply mathematical principles to almost everything, from coinage and weights and measures to the frequency of rebellions and the length of people’s lives. He was an inveterate tinkerer and inventor and was constantly thinking of newer and better ways of doing things, whether it was plowing, the copying of handwriting, or measuring distances.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 11
It’s hard to think of any modern, public person, with Jefferson’s insatiable appetite for “all of human knowledge”.
What draws us to the fictional characters? There’s so much really. How the character is introduced. How they speak. Their perfections. Their flaws.
In Rooftoppers, author Katherine Rundell introduces us to Charles Maxim. He is Sophie’s ward.
Charles is not a smiler. He is not a skipping and kicking your heels with joy type of man. He eats and sleeps little but is somehow not cranky. He is kind. He is generous. He is quotable.
Curiously, Katherine Rundell introduces Charles to us multiple times with different methods. The first intro is a third person introduction:
Charles ate little, and slept rarely, and he did not smile as often as other people. But he had kindness where other people had lungs, and politeness in his fingertips.
Rundell, Katherine. Rooftoppers. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013, pg 11
Then through his character assessment file at the National Childcare Agency:
“C.P. Maxim is bookish, as one would expect of a scholar-also apparently generous, awkward, industrious. He is unusually tall, but doctors’ reports suggest he is otherwise healthy. He is stubbornly certain of his ability to care for a female ward.”
Rundell, Katherine. Rooftoppers. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013, pg 8
Clever approach that. Reinforces who Charles Maxim is without boring us. Katherine Rundell doesn’t create balsa wood characters.
Ok, onto the quotes.
Aptly named, a Charles Maxim quote book should exist. Here’s a few to take home with you.
On parenting:
“I am sure the secrets of child care, dark and mysterious though they no doubt are, are not impenetrable.”
On books:
“Books crowbar the the world open for you.”
On eating ice cream:
“I have a theory” he said, “That the the best place to eat ice cream is in the rain on the outside box of a four-horse carriage.”
On the importance of umbrellas:
“I am an Englishman. I always have an umbrella. I would no more go out without my umbrella than I would leave the house without my small intestine.”
On life:
Never ignore a possible!
Pick up Rooftoppers from somewhere!
I say this all the time because it’s true: often the best education is hands on.
Grandin, Temple. Calling All Minds: How To Think and Create Like an Inventor. New York: Philomel Books, 2018, pg 58
It’s a delight when your reading connects. Without realizing, Dr. Temple Grandin has slipped into my reading at various times over the years. It began with Robert Greens Mastery and continued in Tyler Cowen’s The Age of the Infovore. Temple made subtle appearances in theses books, but each appearance was memorable.
In Mastery, Robert Green shares Temple Grandin’s journey before concluding with example she sets:
When you are faced with deficiencies instead of strengths and inclinations, this is the strategy you must assume: ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others. Instead, like Temple Grandin, direct yourself toward the small things you are good at. Do not dream or make grand plans for the future, but instead concentrate on becoming proficient at these simple and immediate skills. This will bring you confidence and become a base from which you can expand to other pursuits.
Green, Robert. Mastery. New York: Penguin Books, 2018. pg 45
In The Age of the Infovore, Tyler points out Dr. Grandin as an example of an autistic high achiever:
The best-known example of an autistic high achiever is Temple Grandin, a woman who has pioneered commonly used improvements in animal treatment and slaughterhouses; her unique cognitive perspective has helped her understand when animals are afraid and how they can be made to feel more secure.
Cowen, Tyler. The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy. New York, 2009. pg 24,25
It’s fascinating to see how one’s reading life connects over time. A book about mastery, flows to a book about ordering information into something helpful, which flows into a book about becoming an inventor. And within all three books, one thread, one person, Dr. Grandin connects them all.
How has your reading connected over time?
Whenever it’s bad weather, I draw at home and lend a hand to raise my little boys. They will never know what we are doing to give them everything they need.
The Sea Journal: Seafarers’ Sketchbooks, edited by Huw Lewis-Jones, pg 192
Paul-Émile Pajot sharing some life secrets.
Work.
Draw.
Help out with the kids.
The trick is to maintain a kind of naive amazement at each instant of experience-but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an object on your table, or the view from your window, opens your eyes to how marvelous such ordinary things are.
How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne, In one question and twenty attempts at an answer. Sarah Bakewell. Chapter 2 Pay Attention, pg 37.
This could be a productive writing exercise. 200 words describing the closest object near you.
Go!
I’ve been waiting months for this podcast episode. Tyler Cowen and Lydia Davis did not let me down.
For a writer of her stature, Lydia openly admits she finds very long books hard to approach:
COWEN: Do you think the late Thomas Pynchon became unreadable, that somehow it was just a pile of complexity and it lost all relation to the reader? Or are those, in fact, masterworks that we’re just not up to appreciating?
DAVIS: Since I hesitated to even open the books, I can’t answer you, because I do find — not all long books — but very long, very fat books a little hard to approach, and some of them, I try over and over. If I sense that it’s really a load of verbiage, I really don’t. I fault myself for not having the patience to get through at least one, say, late Pynchon, but I haven’t.
Don’t despair! Lydia Davis also struggled to read Ulysses. It took two cracks and a move to Ireland for her to finish:
I had a problem a long time ago trying to read Ulysses by Joyce, and started it twice, and finally read it when I lived in Ireland, which made it much easier because I had his context. That too — I suppose because it had different chapters, each of which approached the ongoing story in a very different way — I found that possible too.
I’m believing more and more, that what great books do, what the internet at it’s brightest light does, is make introductions.
Today’s introduction? The Catalan writer Josep Pla:
There’s a book by a Catalan writer called Josep Pla that’s called The Gray Notebook. That’s very fat, but I keep going back to it and delighting in it, but I’m not reading it all at once. I’m going back to it and just sort of nibbling away at it. It was an amazing project. He took an early, very brief diary of his when he was 21, I think, and it only covered a year and a half. He kept going back to it rather than publishing it. He kept going back to it and expanding it with more memories and more material, and I love that idea. Maybe that’s why I can read it.
Lydia admits the Harry Potter series didn’t captivate her. She preferred the writing in Philip Pullman’s The Dark Materials trilogy. But she understands, Harry Potter’s greatest value is hooking kids on reading:
COWEN: How would you articulate why you don’t like the Harry Potter novels?
DAVIS: That’s fairly easy, although I should have a page in front of me. It’s always better if you have the page, and you can say, “Look at this sentence, look at that sentence.” At a certain point, my son was reading Harry Potter as kids do and did. I think he was probably 11 or 10 or 11, 12, 9 — I don’t know. Also, the Philip Pullman trilogy, whose name I always forget. I thought it would be a lot of fun to read the Harry Potter books because I knew a lot of grownups were reading them and enjoying them. I thought, “This is great. There are a lot of them.”
But when I tried to read them, I didn’t like the style of writing, and I didn’t like the characters, and I didn’t like anything about them. Whereas, I opened the first Philip Pullman book and read the first page and said, “This is wonderful. The writing here is wonderful.” I really think there’s an ocean of difference. I wouldn’t put down the Harry Potter books because, as we know, they got a lot of kids reading and being enraptured with books. I think that matters more than anything, really — getting kids hooked on reading.
Brilliant and insightful. Do give it a listen or read the transcript in full here.
Pair with Henry Oliver’s Lydia Davis twitter thread.
Floodlights and Goalposts 