Reading |

This morning, like just about every Friday morning, I went to the Tattered Cover, Denver’s legendary independent bookstore. My first stop is the in-store coffee shop, where I buy sweet bread– banana if they have it, but this morning it was lemon poppy. Then I visit my favorite sections (crafts, writing, business, creativity), pulling three or so books to review. Sometimes I go with a list of books I’ve heard about and want to check out. Sometimes, like today, I rely on serendipity and just look around to see what’s there. Next, I head upstairs to a Victorian loveseat facing the sustainable culture section. There I sit and browse through the books I’ve selected.

Above, you see today’s choices.

Many years ago, I read Mortimer Adler’s classic, How to Read a Book. Now, I had been a voracious reader since I learned how to read, a process so deep in my past that I do not remember not being able to read. I didn’t think I needed any instructions on how to read a book. Still, I couldn’t resist the title and found it to be a fascinating treatise on several different levels of reading, from entertainment to analysis. If you love books, you might enjoy spending a few hours with this one. It’s probably available at your local library.

I remember the process started with reading the front and back cover of the book and the book flaps (if any) before moving on to the table of contents, index and introduction. Last week, I read a new cozy mystery set in a bookstore where the store manager identified a nonreader (and potential murder suspect) from the fact that he hadn’t looked at the back cover.

Here’s what I did with these books.

Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead: The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long, Strange Trip by Barry Barnes and John Perry Barlow

This title combined my interests in self-employment and rock and roll. I read the covers and TOC and then the foreword and preface. I learned that Barnes earned both his master’s degree and PhD using the Dead as a case study. He was simultaneously, a businessman and a Deadhead.

I’ve ordered it from my library.

Word Hero: A Fiendishly Clever Guide to Crafting the Lines that Get Laughs, Go Viral, and Live Forever by Jay Heinrichs

My interests in writing, words and humor made this one a no-brainer. After perusing the cover and the TOC, I delved into chapter 1, Practice Witcraft and read a few pages, enough to convince me that I wanted to read more about the 43 techniques to write memorable words.

I ordered this one from the library, too.

Destination Creativity: The Life-Altering Journey of the Art Retreat by Ricë Freeman-Zachery

I approached this book a little differently. Ricë is one of my favorite writers. I read her very funny blog, Notes from the VooDoo Café daily and I enjoyed her previous books,

Living the Creative Life: Ideas and Inspiration from Working Artists and

Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art

She shares some of my interest in writing, creativity, and crafts. This book is a tour of art retreats across the country and includes instructions for several projects from retreat workshops. Since this book contains many photos, I leafed through it, stopping on pages that caught my attention.

The library doesn’t have this one, so I will have to buy it. I’m happy to do that because I want to support Ricë’s work. After reading a few quotations from attendees, I’m also thinking that I might want to find an art retreat to attend this year.

While I wait for these books, I’m rereading

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore (humor, religion) for my book club. I laugh out loud on just about every page. I’m also slowly making my way through

Brain Power: Improve Your Mind as You Age by Michael J. Gelb, Kelly Howell and Tony Buzan (baby boomers, aging, brain power, health), which I found on a previous visit to the Tattered Cover. More on this in another post.

Hope you have something fun and enlightening to read. Now it’s time for me to pay some attention to that lemon poppy bread.

The photo above is of a drawstring bag, made in Guatemala, that I bought many years ago at a local flea market. Recently, while listening to the audio book, Jane and the Genius of the Place by Stephanie Barron, I discovered that Jane Austen would have called it a “reticule.” Another word used in this book that struck my fancy was hoyden, which Merriam Webster’s online dictionary tells me means “a girl or woman of saucy, boisterous, or carefree behavior.” Unlike reticule, this was a word I had heard before but not for many years.

I love learning new words from books, even words like these that have fallen out of favor. I don’t own or want a kindle (see why here), but the one thing that really attracts me about ereaders is the ability to look up unfamiliar words immediately. See a word you don’t understand, click on it, and up pops the definition. Instead, I have to do it the old fashioned way: make a note of a new word and google it.

I find new words in books, of course, but I also find them in just paying attention to what I hear on radio, podcasts and conversations around me. I rarely hear new words on television. Go figure.

In church yesterday, Pastor Betty told us that the Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos . According to Wikipedia, “The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time in between, a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens. . . . While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.” I didn’t know that.

If I were serious about improving my vocabulary, I could get one of those Word-a-Day calendars or subscribe to a word-a-day email service. For me, it’s just a hobby because I love words. In fact, I’m probably a linguist in an alternate universe.

However, many researchers have found that vocabulary is an excellent indicator (if not predictor) of career success. Why? Because people judge you by the words you use and whether or not you use them correctly. We also use words when we think. “Language is the tool our minds use to think, plan, solve problems, and succeed,” according to improvingvocabulary.org. Yes, there is at least one organization devoted solely to helping people to improve their vocabularies. See their list of Six Very Best Ways to Improve Your Vocabulary.

The size of my vocabulary isn’t what interests me about words, but I am fascinated by where they came from. Just this morning, I learned why the British call their police “bobbies.” It comes from Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern policing who developed nine principles that police forces today still use. That came from a criminal justice student paper I reviewed. And that is why I like my job: it gives me the daily opportunity to learn about a wide variety of topics.

Learning anything new keeps those brain cells growing.

Category Archives: Reading

Finding Books and Bread

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