{"id":139641,"date":"2017-11-27T14:57:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T14:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circeinstitute.org\/blog-8-habits-every-great-reader\/"},"modified":"2017-11-27T14:57:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T14:57:00","slug":"blog-8-habits-every-great-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circeinstitute.org\/blog\/blog-8-habits-every-great-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Habits of Every Great Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"
Reading is a complicated activity. Sometimes we do it for edification, other times for pleasure, sometimes simply to fulfill an assignment. Sometimes a combination of all three. Some of us mark up our books; others long for the pristine unmarked pages of a brand new edition. Some of us take pride in our personal libraries and are perpetual collectors, while others among us haunt public libraries until the locals know us by name. Some of us read quickly and move from book to book rapidly, while others go slow and steady. Some of us read digital books, while others savor the sensory details of the printed page. Some of us have been lifetime readers, while others are new to the habit. Whatever your<\/em> particular case may be, reading is probably one of the most important parts of your life and this means the oft-lingering question is this: what makes a good reader? So, in keeping with the spirit of our habits<\/em> series I asked a few of my CiRCE-world friends to help answer that question. Here’s what they said. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n David Hicks, author of Norms and Nobility<\/em>, recipient of the 2002 Russell Kirk Paideia Prize<\/strong><\/p>\n “Habit” is the key word. There are some things a man should do every day: pray, repent, eat, sleep, hug his children and kiss his wife and tell them he loves them, work with his mind and back, and read. My typical day begins, as did my father’s, with a pot of coffee, the day’s Prologue and Lexionary readings. If there are no chores to perform on the farm or ranch (more likely in winter than in summer), I spend the afternoon in my library reading. At night, I take a book to bed. I cannot fall asleep without reading, and the test of the book is how late into the night it keeps me awake. I’m a slow reader, without apology, and one who looks up frequently from the page.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Andrew Kern, president of the CiRCE Institute<\/strong><\/p>\n A reader reads well when he pays attention to what he reads. That requires that he seeks answers to his own questions, but not in the sense of forcing the book to give him what he wants. Rather, those questions are drawn from the text itself. Think of it this way: I would ask my brother questions I think he might be able to answer, but many of those questions could not be answered by my grandmother. To be mad at her or to not pay attention to her because of that would be silly. I have to let gramma be gramma and brother be brother. Just so, I will not force a book to tell me something it can\u2019t tell me. But I will ask it the questions it wants to answer. If I do, I\u2019ll be a good reader.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Adam Andrews, Director of the Center for Lit<\/strong><\/p>\n Since I’m not a very good reader myself, this one is easy: good readers don’t read like me. I tend to see a book as a reading assignment that will be finished when I reach the last page. My reading life tends to look like a series of discrete accomplishments, or worse, a list of To-Do’s. As a result, I look at each book as a drop in the bucket compared to all the others I still need to read. There’s no finishing this task, so a task-oriented reader is always in the process of failing. This makes it almost impossible to start a new book when I have completed one. Who wants to be reminded that he will never finish, no matter how long he works?<\/p>\n The good readers that I know have a different view. Books are not assignments for them, and finishing is never their primary goal. They read for the pleasure, stimulation, and comfort of reading, and since you get these things throughout the reading process, not just at the end, they always succeed. They rarely count the books they have completed, or mark their progress in any systematic way. They take notes so they can remember the experience, but this activity is secondary to the experience itself. And most importantly, they tend to start new books right away, since each one is a new opportunity for pleasure, stimulation, and comfort.<\/p>\n I wish I were a reader like that. I would certainly read more, and be the better for it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n