Transforming 1984: The Pursuit of Wisdom and Wonder With How We Read
The year is 1984. George Orwell’s dystopian future has arrived. Ronald Regan is president-elect, and Wes Craven’s nightmare occupies Elm Street. Not only is it a leap year, but it is the year of the rat, according to the Chinese Zodiac. Haruki Murakami places the finishing touches on his fourth novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the […]
Mary Oliver Finds the Antidote to Confusion in Literature
In her essay collection, Upstream, Mary Oliver describes the antidote to confusion she found in literature – first reading and then writing – as a kind of standing with otherness in the world.
The Role of Reciprocity in Nature in Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes
A fresh perspective on the imbalance between animals and humans, Haruki Murakami’s short story The Elephant Vanishes explores the troubling paradoxes hiding in a relationship built on exploitation instead of reciprocity.
Marilyn McEntyre on When Poets Pray
Marilyn McEntyre collects her meditations on classic and contemporary poetry in When Poets Pray and offers the reader a deep reverence for language and God.
Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read
Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read is a newly packaged collection of some of the most beautiful prose Virginia Woolf has written on the creative, radical, and rebellious act of reading.
Lost in Translation: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Meaning is lost in translation between the original Japanese and the English translation of Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
Kenneth Burke on the Rhythm of Reading
In approaching rhetoric, Kenneth Burke teases out a theory of reading that incorporates rhythm and promotes a harmony of our experiences.
Kenneth Burke on Reading for Identification
Kenneth Burke considers every influence of a rhetorical act and develops a theory of identification that offers readers a new way to think about rhetoric.
Reading as Meditation – A Creative Practice
Reading as meditation is the creative practice of attending to the text to evoke the image of thought that penetrates the reader.
The Best Books for Teaching and Learning
The best books for teaching and learning include insights on neuroscience, biology, philosophy, psychology, and communication theory.
Kenneth Burke on Bad Readers
Kenneth Burke says bad readers stem from the spread of literacy through compulsory education and the culture’s inability to pay attention.
Rethinking the Winchester Mystery House
According to legend, the erratic architecture of the Winchester Mystery House was designed to confuse the spirits who haunted Sarah Winchester.
My Super-Nerdy Reading Strategy for Finishing Books
Finishing books is possible with a little strategic planning. Here is how I slay my book debt at the end of the year to reach my reading goals.
Independent Scholarship: Joseph Campbell on Reading Nine Hours a Day
Joseph Campbell discusses independent scholarship and the admirable discipline of reading nine hours a day for five years straight.
Clive Thompson on the Creative Imagination of Coders
Clive Thompson explores the origin stories of coders and recognizes they share one common character trait: a creative imagination.