I return to the blog this week to issue an invitation: join me in the practice of deep reading for 2025. Consider participating in the Zoom discussions as well. Once I know who is interested, I'll coordinate a time for each discussion. Here are some guidelines as you think about this:
1. You don't have to read all the books, but I encourage you to commit when you do decide to do this. To participate in discussion, just let me know which book or books and I'll include you in the email scheduling for that book. Again, read one, two ... all six, up to you.
2. These are difficult books. Embrace the struggle. Resist the impulse to consult secondary sources or the internet or someone else's idea of what something means. Try to formulate your own idea about what something means and then think about those ideas in conversation with your own life experience.
3. Now that I'm involved with Search and Rescue, I may end up canceling a discussion last minute if I get a mission callout. We are a very busy SAR team. I will reschedule the discussion and hope you'll understand if this happens.
4. I invite you to see the practice of deep reading as a way to enhance your attention and learning. I read a lot of books every year and some of them are easy reads, more for entertainment and escape, but I also try to read some challenging books: challenging in style or ideas or culture or whatever, just to expand my thinking ability and test my views. I don't always relish the experience but I'm nearly always better off for persevering through the difficulty.
5. I've either read the selected books before but didn't read them well OR haven't read them and want to. I'm not an authority on these books and don't know if they'll be good or tedious or torturous. I've selected them without consulting anyone else on the matter. I have no agenda with these selections.
Deep Reading Practice 2025 Book Selections
Note: The discussion of the book will be scheduled for the last week of the month indicated. I'm providing bibliographic reference for the edition I have, however please feel free to use any edition you like. Finally, please let me know by the end of December about your interest in discussion of any or all of the books.
January:
George Eliot, Middlemarch. Introduction by A.S. Byatt. New York: The Modern Library, 2000.
February:
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. Da Capo Press edition, 1992.
April:
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary. Translation by Francis Steegmuller. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1991.
June:
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. Translation by H.T. Lowe-Porter. New York: Vintage Books, 1969.
August:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
October:
Charles Dickens, Bleak House. New introduction by Michael Slater. New York: Signet Classics, 2011.
Again, let me know if you'd like to participate in the deep reading and discussion of any or all of these books. If you aren't interested in these, I encourage you to pick a challenging book for yourself this year and make it your mission to persevere in deeply reading that one book--a gift to yourself!
P.S. A note about my absence from blogging: I was wrestling with whether this blog was serving my intended purpose or just turning into more digital clutter. I recognize the lack of specific focus or intent and wondered if I shouldn't fix that. I also know Wix platform will soon want more money from me so I may have to switch over to a different platform like Patreon or Substack or just a newsletter delivered to readers' email inbox. I haven't made a decision about that yet, but meanwhile, I've decided to continue, if only because the blogging discipline is good for my own reflective process and is a solid writing habit, even if sometimes I don't know quite what I think or what I could possibly say about whatever is going on. Onward, shall we?
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