Hey, everyone! How’s the Beowulf on the Beach Reading Challenge going? I’m about halfway through Moby Dick and am really enjoying it. It’s taking longer than I expected because I’m following Jack’s tip #2 for Reading Classics:
Read Slowly
Don’t ever let a sentence go by without fully processing it. Too often we drift through paragraphs, sometimes focusing, sometimes not, but still letting our eyes run down the page. With books that merit the attention, slow-read every sentence, all the time. If you miss a line, turn around. Don’t let anything escape.
Jack’s got thirteen tips like this, featured at the back of Beowulf on the Beach. The first one (“Use a pen”) took a little time for me to get used to… “Write in my book? No Way!” But now I’m noting great lines, things to look up, etc.
Jack was kind enough to record a bunch of videos for Books on the Nightstand. In each, he reads his choice for the best line from a classic. There will be at least fifteen videos in the series (though Jack may record more). We’ll post one a week here on the blog, through Labor Day. Any extras will join the others on the BOTNS YouTube Channel.
p.s. To all of you who won a copy of Beowulf on the Beach, I finally put your copies in the mail today… sorry for the delay!
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It seems to me that if a book deserves my careful, slow attention (classic or otherwise), I’ll pick up on it. Some classics deserve careful, meticulous reads for their language but some don’t. I’ll try it sometime, though. Perhaps I’ve been wrong all along…
This is how I read. I will go back and reread sentences, paragraphs or even whole pages every time I catch my mind wandering. This way I am rarely lost in a plot. The strange thing though is that doing this doesn’t help my post-book retention at all. I forget most books within a few months, hence my prolific re-reading habit.
I’m a big believer in thoroughly comprehensive reading and do that in conjunction with note-taking. I tend to write in my journal however, as opposed to notating the physical book(sometimes the margins are just too small; and too, a journal allows me to cut and paste and expand at will, as well as link up to other titles.) I attach little post-it notes and flags to the pages however and every once in a while will take a red pen to obvious typos. I don’t skip any portion of the book but I find those passages in JM’s commentaries interesting nonetheless.
I got my copy in the mail today! Thank you!
I have a new stack in the house dedicated to certain editions of the Classics and BOTB is right in there with them!
Even though I had already read “Wuthering Heights,” it was recent enough that I was able to give it the BOTB treatment (picking out a favorite line, taking a look at a couple of things JM mentioned in his commentary…) and tomorrow, I start “Jane Eyre.”