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Stop and really look

Stop and really look →

Published September 13  ·  All posts on Sep 13  ·  ,

On a recent trip I found myself with some spare time one morning. I used it to slowly wander through the little hotel’s sitting area. There I found a collection of board games and a couple dozen coffee-table books scattered about. I took the time to thumb through each of them for just a few moments.

This book still held my interest after a few moments and so I applied my page 88 test. When I realized that page 88 was somewhere within a long series of color plates—all of which were interesting to me—I flipped to the Foreword. And then I took a photo of the cover so that I could later snag a copy.

Today, here I am with a copy of the book (bought for $4.95 from AbeBooks). Beyond all of the above and the contents of the book itself, the book is now also imbued with the ambiance of that little hotel and cues up all the memories of that little trip.

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Zen and the brain →

Published June 3, 2024  ·  All posts on Jun 3  ·  

I picked up this book off someone’s bookshelf, thumbed through it, gave it the page 88 test, and decided it was interesting enough… and borrowed it. (It is vanishingly rare that I borrow books. I normally just buy my own and hand the potentially borrowed book back to its owner.) Over a year passed with the book untouched.

I picked it up again and spent an hour with it hopping around and again decided I did want to read it. So I bought my own copy and returned the loaner. Then one day I was preparing for some podcast conversation and (as I often do) I thought about what books I might have which are related… and, for the third time I landed in this book. I dove into the index, found something interesting related to the podcast conversation I was preparing for and got lost reading for an hour.

Okay, fine. Apparently, it’s important that I read this book. So the other day, I cracked it open at the very beginning. I find that while I often skip chapters in a book, it’s always useful to read the introduction, preface, foreword, etc. Below is the literal first paragraph in this book, which I’d not seen in my first three visits.

During rare, spontaneous moments, experiences of very special quality and great import emerge from the depths of the human brain. To each person, these awakenings seem awesomely new. What they convey is not. It is the simplest, oldest wisdom in the world. The message is that ultimate meaning is to be found in this present moment, infusing our everyday lives, here and now. But one can’t predict such major peaks of enlightenment. Their insight-wisdom is next to impossible to describe. Even so, these fragile events inspired our major religions in ways that still shape our cultural development.

~ James Austin from, Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness

If you see the book, you’ll think it’s going to be some left-brain, hyper-analytical, what forest? …it’s just trees, sort of thing. At least, that’s what I thought, each of those first three times I visited. Turns out, it’s actually 850 pages of, “Woa! That’s interesting…”

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Anything noteworthy since →

Published April 20, 2021  ·  All posts on Apr 20  ·  ,

One of my recent acquisitions is this door-stop of a volume, Forty Thousand Quotations Prose and Poetical, published in 1940. Several thoughts spring to mind at this point:

Obviously, this book is 80 years old. Wait, no, that was not obvious to me. I was thinking, “1940… Wow, that’s like 60 years ago,” followed not as quickly as it should have been by, “…no wait, that’s 80 years ago.” So the first thought I’ll share here is that the years pile on like onion-skin pages. Year after year after year after year and before you realize it: Door stop. (Both you have a door stop, and you are a door stop.)

Upon arrival I immediately flipped through it to see what I’d gotten for my $14-plus-shipping. The book says, “prose and poetical,” but I don’t know diddly-squat about this Douglas fellow. There could be forty thousand stinkers better left forgotten. My verdict: The density is low. Perhaps 1 in 4 strike me as even worthy of inclusion in the book. Still, ten thousand quotations prose and poetical are worth 2/10 of one cent each, (in my book.)

It’s said—I’ve heard it said, I’ve said it myself now many times—that our favorite quotations say more about ourselves than of those we’ve quoted.

Is this book a snapshot of 1930’s America? Let this sink in: There’s not a single quote from anyone related in any way to World War II. There isn’t a single modern tech genius in here either. But wait! It was printed in 1940, yes. However the copyrights are 1904, 1914 and 1917. This book is a time machine come to me across more than a century.

I generally give books the page 88 test. That’s laughably near the front of a book which has— (Wait, wat?! This book has exactly 2,000 numbered pages! That’s another tangent I’m not following. Ahem.) Page 88 is laughably near the front of a 2,000 page book. As I carefully flipped towards 88, I was briefly anxious when I thought the entries under “anxiety” might run to page 88, but fortunately, no. The two columns of page 88 cover the tail end of, Apothegm (“a short, pithy and instructive saying or formulation,” honestly, I had to look that up,) then Apparel, and then Apparitions runs onward to page 89.

The first full entry on page 88 is:

A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition.

~ Joubert

slip:4a616.

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Single-serving sized visits with books →

Published February 19, 2020  ·  All posts on Feb 19  ·  ,

Imagine you have a book problem. (Don’t judge me, please.) You’ve read countless books. You’ve given away countless books in an attempt to get the foundation of your house to stop settling to one side. You’ve gone through your to-read book shelves and culled as many as you can bear over to the normal shelves, resigned to being okay with never reading them.

…and you still have hundreds of books that you really want to read.

There are two common ways that people recommend reading books: One-at-a-time, (whether thoroughly and carefully cover-to-cover or by breezing through them more quickly,) and multiple-at-a-time. In both ways however, you intend to pick some book and to completely, (whatever that means to you,) read the book.

I want to explain a third way: Single-serving sized visits.

Begin by allocating a set amount of time. Something like 45 minutes seems to work well for me, but it can be any amount that you can do in one sitting. Extra bonus points if you can make this a recurring thing you do regularly.

You will need post-it notes and a writing instrument. You will not need a bookmark.

You’re going to pay a short visit, (say 45 minutes,) to your book collection by picking one book. Take the book (and your post-its and your writing instrument) and head for your reading spot. (You do have a designated reading spot, right? :)

Spend 45 minutes reading the book however you wish. Skim it. Read the prologue. Dig deep into chapter 4. Start reading at page 88. Turn it upside down and read it [upside down] backwards. Whatever. If you really don’t like the book, you can walk out on the date and put the book on your read pile.

As you read it insert post-its…

  1. …on the upper edge of pages whenever you find a reference to any other book. It doesn’t have to be a book you have, or have read, or even want to read. Just start leaving “top” post-its referring to books. Write the name, (and author, etc., as much or as little as you like—”I have this”, “I want this book”, whatever) on each note.
  2. …on the outer edge of pages whenever you find something interesting. A quote, an idea, killer prose, whatever. Write a note explaining the reason you like what you’re noting, maybe try to position the post-it, and include a little arrow that points to the part—Or just a blank post-it, and write directly in your book if that’s your style.

After the allotted time, your visit is over. Put the book back, either in the to-read area, or maybe in the read-these area. (If you bother to distinguish.)

Over time, you will slowly get to know more and more of your books. You won’t feel like you need to read the books—you already know you can’t possibly finish them all. At least this way you’re going to have hundreds of great little visits with these ideas you’ve collected.

Over time, you’ll find more and more top post-its as you build mental links to other books. You’ll find all those side post-its marking ideas you like. You can also pick up a book and see what you think of it— I’ve never touched this book. [It has no post-its.] I clearly love this book. [It furry with notes.] When you want to recommend a book, you are likely to have post-its that have the good bits you’ll want them to see first. The top post-its are going to suggest other books in your collection you might want to visit next.

…and on and on.

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