Reading

I like reading for pleasure. Which got me thinking about what the textbook chapter said regarding how you read different types of material differently. With the novel I am reading, I read fast and it isn't necessary to understand every word or even to read every sentence. It is more about relating to the characters and the overall feeling you get while you are reading. You can visualize what is happening and are excited to see what happens next. Burroughs is a good writer in that he writes short, crisp, clean sentences. You do not have long convoluted sentences with a lot of information. It is easy to picture what he is writing about as when he describes putting tinfoil on the dog to make her shiny. He does that in a few short sentences and because of my cultural background, I know what a dog and tinfoil are and can immediately picture the scene.

This is unlike reading our textbook, where it is important to understand the various concepts which are new and to focus on every sentence. I read slowly, highlighting important words and phrases, and think about how the information is going to be useful and how I will be able to incorporate it into my teaching. And that is the difference between reading a novel for pleasure and reading for knowledge: whether you are consciously actually trying to learn while you are reading. Not that you don't necessarily learn from novels, as perhaps I will have a better understanding now of what it is to live with someone who is bipolar, but that isn't the book's main purpose, unlike a textbook.