Comment by mrsrobin on 22/03/2018 at 03:35 UTC*

2 upvotes, 6 direct replies (showing 6)

View submission: Drop Everything And Read: Week 1

Day 1

Date: 22 March 2018, Thursday

Time: 8:00am to 8:25am

Book/s: Real Happiness by Sharon Salzberg and The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron

I'm finding it best to read these books about meditation first thing in the morning, before my work day starts, while my environment is still quiet and my mind is still calm. I tried reading them at the end of the day but I just couldn't focus. I don't know if it's the best idea to have two books at the same time on very similar topics, because they're starting to bleed together in my head, but maybe that's a good thing? Anyway right now in Real Happiness it's about different ways to approach your meditation, like there's Tea Meditation and Walking Meditation and one where you Note your emotions. In the other book, I stopped at the section that talks about lovingkindness (*metta*). I'm going to try to apply that to MIL when she comes back this evening.

On the exercise: I'm worried nobody else will show up to this party, after I've put so much energy into it, and that will be kind of embarrassing. On the other hand, if nothing else, I can just use this as a space to log my own progress, and that won't be a complete waste, too, because god knows I could use the help. Hosting this activity is already making me read more than I usually would, because I know I'll have to make a sample entry like this one, to hopefully encourage others to join.

edit to add:

Date: same day

Time: 10:50pm to 11:25pm

Book: Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina

So many highlighted parts, and mostly me just nodding along, feeling validated. Things I learned today: stress while pregnant can have long-term effects on the child, seen by age 5 and lasting until adulthood. Then the next chapter was about the 4 main reasons couples fight post-baby (sleep loss, social isolation, unequal distribution of household workload, and depression), and some suggested methods to maintain the peace. Basically: happy wife, happy life. For real. But specifically: “if [in John Gottman’s studies] the wife felt she was being heard by her husband—to the point that he accepted her good influence on his behavior—the marriage was essentially divorce-proof.” Empathy is “the independent variable that predicts a successful marriage”.

I like the format of the book because at the end of each chapter is a section called Key Points, which is like a tldr.

Good reading day today, so far. Best times for me to read, I’m finding, is before the baby wakes up in the morning, and after he goes to sleep at night.

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Comment by mrsrobin at 23/03/2018 at 04:00 UTC*

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Day 2 (replying to my Day 1 comment to keep everything together)

Date: 23 March 2018

Time: 11:30am to 11:50am

Book: Your Beauty Mark by Dita Von-Teese

Finally finished this! Zoomed through the rest of the book while FIL played with kidlet this morning. It's an okay book, around 3/5 stars. There were a lot of photo tutorials, and she's pretty as a picture posing gamely in each, but I couldn't help but wish there were video tutorials instead. What I was hoping for, her backstage secrets, were sprinkled among the guest interviews and the beauty basics and history, so sometimes I got bored. This would be good for someone who is just starting out with makeup (maybe late teens, early twenties) and is looking for a celebrity big sister figure for guidance. As beauty bibles / memoirs go, I prefer Sali Hughes and Lisa Eldridge. But if you are a Dita fan then this is a wonderful collection of her photos.

edit:

Time: 5:15pm to 5:30pm

Book: Scrooge #Worstgiftever by Brett Wright, Charles Dickens

Quick read to kill off a book while in-laws brought kidlet to the supermarket. I previously enjoyed some books in this series called "OMG Shakespeare", which tries to millennialize classics by re-telling it with emoji, acronyms, and social media. I really liked the Pride and Prejudice one (*Darcy Swipes Left*), and the Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet ones were okay. However, the quality is inconsistent across the series. Of the two authors, I noticed that I preferred the ones written by Courtney Carbone. The style of this Mr. Wright, unfortunately, falls flat. The humor is a little corny, and especially in this one, I felt like rolling my eyes and groaning at the dad-level kind of jokes. I don't recommend this book, but do check out *Darcy Swipes Left* and *srsly Hamlet*, which seem more realistically Gen Z in feel, while managing to retain some of the wit of the original books. I might try *Macbeth #killingit* next.

Comment by mrsrobin at 26/03/2018 at 15:47 UTC*

2 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Day 5

Date: 26 March, Monday

Times: 8:30-9 (?), 10-10:30pm

Book: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (0-50%)

A very timely book. More people need to read it. I'll try to summarize what I've read so far:

• "Read at Whim". Read because you want to, for your enjoyment, rather than primarily for intellectual improvement. On the claims that reading is supposed to make you a better person and improve your morals, Terry Eagleton: "many people were indeed deep in high culture [during Word War II], but [...] this had bit prevented some of them from engaging in such activities as superintending the murder of Jets in central Europe."

• gives an example of a critic who read books as his career-- he knew that to keep sane he also had to read books for fun.

• read even what some people call "unsophisticated". Example is Harold Bloom, a literary critic, he thinks Harry Potter fans are "nonreaders" and shakes his head that they aren't reading "superior fare". Fck that. This author doesn't agree with that either.

• if you like a certain work, try to read "upstream", meaning the older books that may have influenced it. Quote from Kipling: "if we devote ourselves exclusively to modern literature -- we get to think the world is progressing when it is only repeating itself. [...] it is only when one reads what men wrote long ago that one realizes how absolutely modern the best of old things are."

• the author advises one to make notes while reading, but keep a balance: not to get into your own thoughts too much that you lose the flow of the main text. He doesn't really like highlighting, they're like a low level kind of interaction. I guess like on FB there just a Like or on Reddit an Upvote, instead of taking the time and effort to think about a decent comment which helps you solidify and organize your own thoughts. He laments that some books don't have enough margin space for any notes.

• he has a Kindle and mentions some differences in the experience of note-taking -- you can't really encircle or star things... You're limited in the ways you can interact with the page. On the other hand it's nice to have a summary of all your notes and highlights in one place.

• one side effect of scribbling your notes in your own books is encountering your past self's reaction, which the author days sometimes makes him cringe. He wants to erase them sometimes but it's also a good record of how his reading tastes have changed over the years.

• don't be obsessed with reading speed. Better to read slowly but with more comprehension.

• this is a funny part I enjoyed: if you want to read trashy stuff BUT also want to appear smart at parties, just read a few Wikipedia pages on the topic "in order to impress people whose opinion you shouldn't be deferring to anyhow", then go home and go back to reading what you actually enjoy.

• many people who want to read faster tend to read in an "uploading data" style, such as when reading for school. But if you read only to extract the information, you miss out on a lot of things (lovey language or subtle ideas) vs if you slow down. (Personally I noticed this when listening to an audiobook vs something I read. There are so many things I hadn't noticed because I just wanted to finish quickly. I'm really guilty of skimming when I'm bored.)

• author touches on how our technology has affected our ability to concentrate. "I get twitchy within just a few minutes of sitting down with a book--I have noticed that my hand will start reaching for my iPhone without my consciously telling it to". Interesting that what seemed to have helped him concentrate again was getting a Kindle. "The technology generates an inertia that makes it significantly easier to keep reading that to do anything else. [...] E-readers [...] promote linearity." Basically nakakatamad to do other things on the Kindle, so he just ends up reading. Then "I found my ability to concentrate, and concentrate for long periods of time, restored almost instantly."

• he says other social media is addicting because of the power of "what BF Skinner called 'intermittent reinforcement'". I can relate so much to why I'm addicted to Reddit: I keep on refreshing to find something interesting, or hoping that I'll see that orange envelope in my inbox.

• "We already know what we need to do if we want to get back to reading slowly and attentively. Shut down the computer ; put aside the cellphone."

• cultivating attentiveness, our ability to concentrate, as opposed to "multitasking" (which is not good because it "results in a state of 'continuous partial attention'") is important because then if we give something our full attention, we can be deeply lost in a book, and "such raptness is deeply satisfying."

• "This is what makes 'readers', as opposed to 'people who read'. To be lost in a book is genuinely addictive : someone who has had it a few times wants it again".

There are so many more things I highlighted, more than I can type now (I'm just on my phone) so I just urge you all to find a copy of this book and give it a go. Sorry this was long.

Comment by mrsrobin at 24/03/2018 at 17:34 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Day 3

Date: 24 March, Saturday Time: 10:20 to 10:40pm Book: The Hobbit by Tolkien

Didn't get to read until late evening. I had a quick ten minutes sometime mid afternoon, and continued my book "Baron Rules for Baby", but in the evening I didn't feel up for a science-heavy text, so I dipped into fantasy.

I saw the movie before reading, so that's coloring my intake now, but not in a bad way. I don't have the best imagination for visualizing fantasy lands, so it's nice that Hollywood already did that for me.

So far the book is enjoyable and often funny, like the little asides that I suspect kids might gloss over, and it's actually more for the amusement of the grownups. The book is also easy enough to stop and start.

Comment by mrsrobin at 25/03/2018 at 16:19 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Day 4 Date: 25 March, Sunday

Time: 8:30 to 8:40pm, 11:30pm to 12:10am

Book: The Hobbit by Tolkien

Wasn't able to read all day and was worried I couldn't clock in my session for the day, so I took my Kindle with me into the bathroom instead of my phone, and for a bit of reading done. Then after the baby slept was able to read for a longer session. Started in the part where they get pulled into the goblin cave, Bilbo meets Gollum, then read up to where Beorn is sending them off into Mirkwood.

I read somewhere on r/books that if you aim to read daily, the key to not feeling burned out is to stop at about an hour per book. Something like pacing yourself, it's a fun run, not a sprint or race, don't tire yourself out too early. So I will keep that in mind, so I can stick to this reading challenge until the end of the month.

Comment by mrsrobin at 28/03/2018 at 03:28 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Day 6

Date: 27 March 2018, Tuesday

Time: 2 sets of 10 minutes, sometime in the afternoon

Book: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs

Didn't have the best reading day, was constantly getting interrupted. Then in the evening wasn't able to read at all because had a migraine. From what little I read today, I am hyper-aware that I am skimming it, because the topic of the book is the kind of attention we give books, whether it's "deep attention" or "hyper attention". This book is best read with a notepad and pen on the side, because though filled with citation of scientific research and other authors, it's a bit circuitous, in the style of Montaigne essays (as far as I can recall), and it helps if you try to summarize now and then, in your own words, what was just written.

I am also going to start posting the bulk of my notes on Goodreads so I don't clog up this space.

Comment by mrsrobin at 28/03/2018 at 03:38 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Day 7 (I made it!)

Date: 28 March 2018, Wednesday

Time: 7:00am to 8:00am

Book: Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina (43% to 49%)

This reading session, though an hour long, didn't cover so many pages, because I kept on taking photos of the book pages and underlining them and sending them to my friends. I'm not sure if that's breaking the rules, but if this "cheating" halves your time as penalty, then I'm still good for 30 minutes.

This kind of book (non-fiction, packed with science) also doesn't lend itself well to a breezy read. I found myself flipping back to re-read to review the key points of the chapter. Making notes on Goodreads also helped. I just try to pretend someone just asked me "so what's it about?" and I try to ELI5 it to them. I think that really helps for me to remember and process the info.

At the end of the (reading) week I was starting to feel lazy and I considered declaring a rest day for reading, but maybe I'll just allow myself a low read day.

What I learned about myself through this activity: 20 minutes is doable most days. Then on the days I can just do 10 minutes, that small something is still better than nothing. It also helps to have a few books which I can cycle through, just to mix it up and prevent myself from feeling like it's assigned reading.