Talking with books

Well, I have finished all of my readings for my two courses (cue the Peanuts theme music and begin dancing).  You’ll recall in an earlier post that I lamented on my slow reading ability.  The concept of speed reading is so far out of reach for me, so foreign a concept as to be almost magical.  When I see people skim through a text and give a cogent recollection of its meaning shortly thereafter, I find it to be as plausible an explanation that they absorbed the written words through some sort of neuropathic osmosis as opposed to actually reading them.  Like the words leapt off of the page and were sucked into their cranium through some sort of Dyson-designed literary wind tunnel technology.  I just don’t get it and I don’t think that I ever will.  I’ve learned a few tricks to speed up my reading, but I’m still slow. Painfully, sharp-stick-in-the-eye slow.  But I did get all of my reading done.  All of it.  All four books.  In less than 12 weeks.    And, I read a significant number of journal articles on top of the required reading.  So, you might have guessed that I’m pretty proud of myself.  And I’m okay with being a slow reader, I think. I spend a lot of time in critical contemplation upon my reading, remaking my own theory in the face of other.  I think that contributes to my slowness.  And, I think that that is okay.

Brookfield writes about having a conversation with books.  The more engaged conversations are earmarked by underlines, highlights, dog-eared pages, notes in the margins and broken spines – in the books, I mean (God, if reading were that painful, I think that I would have given up long ago!).  I’ve had some engaging conversations these last few months - with all of the books that I have read.  At times the conversations have become quite heated.  I’ll admit to throwing down a book in frustration a time or two.  At other times I have scrambled frantically, feverishly flipping through the pages in a book to recall a conversation that we had at some point in time that had only now made sense to me and developed meaning.  Indeed I think that it would be fair to say that I even developed relationships with my books.  They challenged me and affirmed me.  They gave me confidence and kicked me in the stomach (not that I’ve ever had a relationship with someone who literally kicked me in the stomach – well except for that kid in my neighbourhood back when I was 7, but he wasn’t much of a friend anyway).  So I am glad to have “met” my books, as Brookfield suggests.  And I am glad that our initial conversations are done and they were most fruitful.  I know that I’ll go back to converse with them in the remaining weeks of my current courses and likely again and again in the future.