Bang!Zoom! Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I've a copy of WEM I'm picking up tomorrow, I'll be doing my first reading of it ever. Anyone care to join me in comparing thoughts/notes as I work through the first reading? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustybug Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I will! I have never read it either, but just checked it out from the library! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 14, 2012 Author Share Posted January 14, 2012 Awesome coolness. The book preview was excellent. Are you going to set up the formal journaling to accompany the readings? I am. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I've attempted the grammar stage exercises for the autobiographies I've read. I might get further if I ever find one I actually LIKE! Don't start with the autobiographies, that's my advice! Rosie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 14, 2012 Author Share Posted January 14, 2012 You would not believe the ridiculous amount of excitement I am under waiting to go get this book. I'm also stopping by Office Max to pick up supplies for note booking through it. No one in the house understands me. Someone please tell me that they get it.....:D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 15, 2012 Author Share Posted January 15, 2012 Just bumping, asking if anyone wants to do an- initial reading / notebook set-up as I begin this. Anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quark Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 I'm only on Chapter 1 and plan to use a spiral-bound journal. :001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 15, 2012 Author Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) Okay, about this chapter 1 business... I'm a huge proponent of really "owning a book"- what it looks like after I've worked it a few rounds pretty much qualifies as a coloring book. I'm one of those people. For my first reading and notebooking, I use yellow highlighters and the following codes: (secondary readings go highlight in blue/green..whatever..you get it..) So I have a three ring binder with top loading page protectors and one 70 page spiral wide ruled notebook. I tend to scribble a lot when I can't get something.... The margin codes I work with on a first reading are set up like this: R/N= Right Now R=Rule I= Instruction T/D= To Do A= Advice R=Review B=Book W=Writer T=Title Q=Question-Reflection V=Vocabulary S=Statement, Important ---- I'm hyper analytically made, it's how I'm wired. So far, on Ch. 1....I have located four rules. 1. Morning scheduled reading 2. Four days a week only 3. 30 minutes maximum 4. No computer/electronic use prior to reading --- I just want to say that in the pages 1-24- anytime a name was mentioned..such as - well, let's just baby-step it....page 1...as an example.. I have noted the following: W- Writer, William Dean Howells B- The Rise of Silas Lapham S- "But I was expected to teach myself." Q- "Were the conclusions overstated? Drawn from skimpy evidence? (example) ----------------- I'm illustrating the above to show how I handle and gleefully mark up a book to really tear it down and absorb from it. I know this way is probably viewed as "a bit much"- but it's what works for me. I don't want to miss a single thing, and even now, just beginning it, I know I'm only going to get the candy wrapper off it on the first reading and study. Anytime a personality, book or definition is something I'm unfamiliar with, I only do a quick skim in Wickepedia say...to get some of the additional background, it seems to enrich it for me and the way I understand it, and hope to feel a connection with why it's there in the first place. Edited January 15, 2012 by one*mom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quark Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) I feel like I should give you an award or something. :001_smile: You're amazing! I'm reading it because I love words and I love how writers express themselves and I hope to be able to write like them some day. So far, my journal has quotes that have appealed to me and the page numbers to revisit them later. I also do the Wikipedia thing. While my books are rarely written in, I do scribble and doodle in my journal. Good luck! ETA: I had written earlier that "I'm not so much in it for the classical education aspect of it" and I realize that's not 100% true. I do like the classical education model. I'm perhaps not just as analytical as you are at this stage of my reading. Edited January 15, 2012 by quark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 15, 2012 Author Share Posted January 15, 2012 Did you happen to read the grasshopper passage from W. D. Howells in Wickepedia? I thought, when I read that, it was such a strong and accurate piece of thought that precedes the entire reason(s) of why anyone would even care to go waltzing and poking at reading theory, application or creation. A secondary breeze came with a quick study also of the opening quote, and that was the book "The Rise of Silas Lapham" dealt with the death of relationship. What a groovy interviewing of circumstance. The Grasshopper quote from W. D. Howells sourced from Wickepedia (may or may not be perfectly accurate...dunno- bolding is mine) Howells defined realism as "nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material."[8] In defense of the real, as opposed to the ideal, he wrote, "I hope the time is coming when not only the artist, but the common, average man, who always 'has the standard of the arts in his power,' will have also the courage to apply it, and will reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it, in science, in literature, in art, because it is not 'simple, natural, and honest,' because it is not like a real grasshopper. But I will own that I think the time is yet far off, and that the people who have been brought up on the ideal grasshopper, the heroic grasshopper, the impassioned grasshopper, the self-devoted, adventureful, good old romantic card-board grasshopper, must die out before the simple, honest, and natural grasshopper can have a fair field. ---------- Howells was a pretty intense intellectual figure, if I'd ever been in his presence for lunch, I'd never speak a word but only hope to listen to great stories of adventure. I thought the use of the the word babarise was pretty interesting also. I had to stop to look that up just to be sure I was getting the context right. It's definition: Verb 1. barbarise - become crude or savage or barbaric in behavior or language barbarize change - undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature; "She changed completely as she grew older"; "The weather changed last night" barbarise, barbarize - make crude or savage in behavior or speech; "his years in prison have barbarized the young man" 2. barbarise - make crude or savage in behavior or speech; "his years in prison have barbarized the young man" barbarize alter, change, modify - cause to change; make different; cause a transformation; "The advent of the automobile may have altered the growth pattern of the city"; "The discussion has changed my thinking about the issue" barbarise, barbarize - become crude or savage or barbaric in behavior or language --- Interesting stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OrdinaryTime Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 I just picked it up from the library yesterday. I need to previee it yet, but I may be joining you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WTMCassandra Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 Wow, you go, girl! Now I understand your email asking about the notebook. I am totally a SKIMMER compared to you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 (edited) I would dearly love some company with this. It took me a full struggle to understand (and am I right?) to understand the glimmer under the advice about the idea of sticking to a list and subject field. Page 20: 3/4 the way down, left hand side: .....Once you have learned how to progress through the steps (clipped stages)- then turn to the reading lists in Part II. These lists...organized by subject; if you read the books in order..limiting yourself to one field of inquiry.... boom.brain.stopped.right.there My brain starting ranting: WHY?----- Why "limit" myself in this study? Why do this in one particular order? What's all this 'stuff' about framework-framing of what? Why do it this way? Why is it going to impact my later reading? What's this stuff about reinforcement and clarification? Why stick to a "list" I didn't make? What's all this stuff about chaos? HUH?:001_huh: Oh someone hold my hand.:toetap05: So I chase this idea for literally like three hours today. Pacing was involved. A couple of glasses of homemade orange juice. I'm scrubbing my hair in the shower thinking about this. Did I seriously just slam a glass on the counter in frustration? How many times have I flipped this book down trying to "get it." ------------------- All I needed to do was move one paragraph more to lock it up and turn on the dendrite lights. How e m b a r r a s s i n g :chillpill: PS: Nope, not telling what it says in the next paragraph. No one handed it to me like a piece of candy. You have to read the book. Nah Nah. I worked for that brain cell. Hard. Edited January 16, 2012 by one*mom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WTMCassandra Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 LOL. You gave yourself good advice. 1) Chill. 2) Keep Reading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OrdinaryTime Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 Bauer addresses this question of "lists" further on pgs. 50-52. I generally have the same initial reaction to reading lists as you, especially outside an institutional setting. Why these books in particular? I thought Bauer did a lovely job "defending" her list by notdefending it too heartily, but encouraging you to add and change as needed for your personal enrichment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 (edited) I skipped to pg. 50 just for the fun of it...yep..it's totally laying in the great wide open..geesh. To my enormous ego I dedicate this song by Tom Petty: - Ego can really get in the way of learning. When I was on page. 20, reading a Wickepedia entry on Friedrich Schleiermacher - I found myself so emotionally moved as both just a person, as a mother, a parent and observer of his life. Whew, what a life..what a life. One of readings in particular I saved about his history...(bolding is mine) "Though the work added to the reputation of its author, it aroused the increased opposition of the theological schools it was intended to overthrow, and at the same time Schleiermacher's defence of the right of the church to frame its own liturgy in opposition to the arbitrary dictation of the monarch or his ministers brought him fresh troubles. He felt isolated, although his church and his lecture-room continued to be crowded. Schleiermacher continued with his translation of Plato and prepared a new and greatly altered edition of his Christlicher Glaube, anticipating the latter in two letters to his friend Lucke (in the Studien und Kritiken, 1829), in which he defended his theological position generally and his book in particular against opponents on the right and the left. The same year Schleiermacher lost his only son — a blow which, he said, "drove the nails into his own coffin." But he continued to defend his theological position against Hengstenberg's party on the one hand and the rationalists von Cölln and D. Schulz on the other, protesting against both subscription to the ancient creeds and the imposition of a new rationalistic formulary." You read things like this and it's just heart-stopping, what that must of been like to live through. When the quote by Schleiermacher was included (partial)- "..indulged in his early years: a wide-ranging and impressive, but unsystematic, devouring of the books that left his mind, as he put it in later years, "like Chaos, before the world was created." I should have been paying better attention. It's there for a reason. Reason is a lovely word. Amen. Edited January 16, 2012 by one*mom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 LOL - Mine looks like a colouring book, too. I detest highlighters. I prefer coloured pencils to bracket or underline. I pick the colour depending on what I think is pretty. My book has pictures in the margins, some in watercolours, of the places I was when I was waiting for my children to come up with their answers. Our methods may differ but the results are about the same. I, too, reduced the book to a step-by-step procedure for us to follow. Then I used the procedure for whatever I felt like reading. One of the first books I used it for was Reading Lolita in Tehran (think I got the title right). Good thing. Otherwise, I would have missed the point entirely, you know, the point in the title? Sigh. I quickly abandonned keeping a notebook. Too complicated for me. I just write straight in the margins of whatever book I am reading. Alibris makes it all possible : ) Those questions for each genre are magic. They make you see things you never would have seen otherwise. A reading partner is also magic in the same way. Don't get bogged down in the specifics SWB suggests. Like TWTM, she includes detailed directions for those who need them (like those getting started), but if you find a different way works better for you, you should abandon them. Many of the suggestions are designed to help you make room in your life for this new, time-consuming, hard-to-do, not-always-fun job and to help you develop a sustainable habit and not burn out or find it overwhelming. You can try the procedure on some short stories the first few times, until you get it down. Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 17, 2012 Author Share Posted January 17, 2012 I start Chapter 4 tomorrow morning. I'm thinking I'm going to do a combo of a paper notebook & maybe a pin-interest board for it. There seems to be a lot of really cool visual stuff (on the net) which is attached. I can't stand the thought of printing out all the graphics (ink cost)... It is really amazing realizing how many titles which I've missed in my life. Somewhere in a forward skimming last night I hit a title called "White Noise" and checked the Wikipedia entry for it. That story line about blew my head off. :blink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OrdinaryTime Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Have you decided what reading list you are going to tackle first? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quark Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Don't get bogged down in the specifics SWB suggests. Like TWTM, she includes detailed directions for those who need them (like those getting started), but if you find a different way works better for you, you should abandon them. Many of the suggestions are designed to help you make room in your life for this new, time-consuming, hard-to-do, not-always-fun job and to help you develop a sustainable habit and not burn out or find it overwhelming. You can try the procedure on some short stories the first few times, until you get it down.Nan So there's hope for me yet? :001_smile: Thanks for this tidbit Nan! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.Balaban Posted January 22, 2012 Share Posted January 22, 2012 I am interested in reading along as well. I was going to try and do this with my husband but he is not motivated, or he has read most of these books. I am largely a skimmer when I read and I want to practice MAKING myself focus on small chunks of text to really delve deeper into a text when I read it. I think that WEM will be perfect practice for this. As far as (reading) lists go, I would like to follow the WEM list, however, I am open to adding books. I also love your abbreviations. :) How do you keep all of that in your head at one time??! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelBee Posted January 22, 2012 Share Posted January 22, 2012 I would love to do this but have horrible follow through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 22, 2012 Author Share Posted January 22, 2012 (edited) Photo 1 shows my copy of WEM with plastic index tabs at each section or category of literature. There are five. Novel, Memoir, History, Drama & Poetry. These are those hard plastic tabs you can buy and slide in a slip of paper with the heading. Pretty sturdy. Photo 2 shows my interior cover of WEM with my “legend†of abbreviations for the marginal notations as I skip along. Photo 3 shows how awful I am about highlighting things…. What you see here are pages 20/21 when I had my mental battle with trying to even wrap my mind around what was said within those pages. Boy, that was a struggle! When I go back for reading two of the chapter, I’ll change my highlighter color as well. The second reading I’ll do in probably green or whatever, and reading 3 maybe in blue…dunno yet. Photo 4 shows the accompanying note book I’ve set up to slide in my journaling notes longhand. Same deal, plastic sheets to hold the notes as I complete them on the fill in form for each book. Ya, go ahead, imagine this notebook holding all that. I’m probably going to end up with 10 8†thick binders if I ever get this done…. Nice heirloom for my grandkids or something someday anyway. I can just imagine it, “So, who wants these notebooks?†“not me.†“Nah, no thanks.†Poof. In the trash they’ll go… lol..then someone will drag them out again saying.."Hey! Hey! Aren't these the notebooks that go with that one story mom tells about the day Grandma scribbled all over the back of her hands?" (yes, I did this, my daughter is reading WEM right along with me...I tease her as we go along saying, "Pay attention now, there *will* be a test...) Edited January 22, 2012 by one*mom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 22, 2012 Author Share Posted January 22, 2012 Today's partial progress, visually.... http://aclassicalblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/because-im-worth-itwem-pg-1-23.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted January 22, 2012 Share Posted January 22, 2012 Have you finished digesting the beginning of TWEM? What are you going to read first? Have you found a reading partner? The more different from you your reading partner is, the more you will grow. Nan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 22, 2012 Author Share Posted January 22, 2012 Nan, I know you did a pretty intensive study of WEM. Now this might be me being overly "artsy fartsy" and connecting things which are not there...but..I'm going to ask anyway-even if this makes me look like a complete idiot... The opening of the book holds a quote by William Howells from the book The Rise of Silas Lapham. I'm a "context" nut- I can really get hung up on atmosphere. If one reads the ..say...oh..about ten pages prior to the quote (in the actual book of Silas Lapham), then say, another ten pages after it appears...there's a context there to appreciate I think. It's very wispy and foggy to explain, but..like I said, the context of the quote, the backstory and framework of it... What do you think of that? It's been bugging me for days.... -- On which category/book to read first, holy cow, I have no idea yet. I'm not done tearing apart the first 23 pages...I think I'm either a rabid completest or just really slow; I have no idea where I am on the spectrum of getting through this. Now that I'm on my third reading and halfway through the back-story of the "nouns" and "names" (and I'm still talking the first 23 pages here) - I just want to stay here and re-familiarize myself with some of this stuff to get my feet on the ground. I'm working on summarizing those names/times and historical features & titles now. It's terrific stuff. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justamouse Posted January 22, 2012 Share Posted January 22, 2012 You are awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.Balaban Posted January 22, 2012 Share Posted January 22, 2012 It has been some time since I read through WEM, so I think I will begin to do that again. I feel like a total slacker. Of course, I'm not. but you know. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bang!Zoom! Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 I was able to write some e-journal page 2 of chapter one today. That's as far as I've got...lol..if you are interested, my thoughts are here: Ch. 1, pg. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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