The Pleasures Of Reading In An Age Of Distraction

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The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

Author : Alan Jacobs
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199831678
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (316 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by : Alan Jacobs

Download or read book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction written by Alan Jacobs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way. In this book, Alan Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers, reading is alive and well in America. There are millions of devoted readers supporting hundreds of enormous bookstores and online booksellers. Oprah's Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent NEA survey reveals an actual uptick in the reading of literary fiction. Jacobs's interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you--the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim, read what gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to the more methodical approach of Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on electronic devices. Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first experienced as children.

A Theology Of Reading

Author : Alan Jacobs
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429982224
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis A Theology Of Reading by : Alan Jacobs

Download or read book A Theology Of Reading written by Alan Jacobs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the whole of the Christian life is to be governed by the "law of love"—the twofold love of God and one's neighbor—what might it mean to read lovingly? That is the question that drives this unique book. Through theological reflection interspersed with readings of literary texts (Shakespeare and Cervantes, Nabokov and Nicholson Baker, George Eliot and W. H. Auden and Dickens), Jacobs pursues an elusive quarry: the charitable reader.

The Pleasures of Reading

Author : Robert Alter
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393314991
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (149 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pleasures of Reading by : Robert Alter

Download or read book The Pleasures of Reading written by Robert Alter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1996 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished critic rescues literature from the ivory tower and reestablishes reading as a personal source of complex pleasure and insight.

Read to Lead

Author : Jeff Brown
Publisher : Baker Books
ISBN 13 : 1493430254
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (934 download)

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Book Synopsis Read to Lead by : Jeff Brown

Download or read book Read to Lead written by Jeff Brown and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's the common habit shared by many successful people throughout history. It's responsible for unlocking limitless creativity and influence. It's known to reduce stress, improve decision-making skills, and make you a better leader. What is it? Reading. And it's the single best thing you can do to improve yourself professionally. Reading more and better books creates opportunities for you to learn new skills, rise above your competition, and build a successful career. In Read to Lead you'll learn - why you need to read like your career depends on it - the five science-backed reasons reading will help you build your career - how to absorb a book into your bloodstream - a technique that can double (or triple!) your reading speed - tips on creating a lifetime reading habit - and more If you want to lead a more satisfied life, have more intelligent conversations, and broaden your mind, you need to read to lead!

The Enchanted Hour

Author : Meghan Cox Gurdon
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062562835
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Enchanted Hour by : Meghan Cox Gurdon

Download or read book The Enchanted Hour written by Meghan Cox Gurdon and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal writer’s conversation-changing look at how reading aloud makes adults and children smarter, happier, healthier, more successful and more closely attached, even as technology pulls in the other direction. A miraculous alchemy occurs when one person reads to another, transforming the simple stuff of a book, a voice, and a bit of time into complex and powerful fuel for the heart, brain, and imagination. Grounded in the latest neuroscience and behavioral research, and drawing widely from literature, The Enchanted Hour explains the dazzling cognitive and social-emotional benefits that await children, whatever their class, nationality or family background. But it’s not just about bedtime stories for little kids: Reading aloud consoles, uplifts and invigorates at every age, deepening the intellectual lives and emotional well-being of teenagers and adults, too. Meghan Cox Gurdon argues that this ancient practice is a fast-working antidote to the fractured attention spans, atomized families and unfulfilling ephemera of the tech era, helping to replenish what our devices are leaching away. For everyone, reading aloud engages the mind in complex narratives; for children, it’s an irreplaceable gift that builds vocabulary, fosters imagination, and kindles a lifelong appreciation of language, stories and pictures. Bringing together the latest scientific research, practical tips, and reading recommendations, The Enchanted Hour will both charm and galvanize, inspiring readers to share this invaluable, life-altering tradition with the people they love most.

Why I Read

Author : Wendy Lesser
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374709815
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Why I Read by : Wendy Lesser

Download or read book Why I Read written by Wendy Lesser and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished literary magazines in the country, The Threepenny Review, to describe her love of literature. As Lesser writes in her prologue, "Reading can result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or contempt, depending on who you are and what the book is and how your life is shaping up at the moment you encounter it." Here the reader will discover a definition of literature that is as broad as it is broad-minded. In addition to novels and stories, Lesser explores plays, poems, and essays along with mysteries, science fiction, and memoirs. As she examines these works from such perspectives as "Character and Plot," "Novelty," "Grandeur and Intimacy," and "Authority," Why I Read sparks an overwhelming desire to put aside quotidian tasks in favor of reading. Lesser's passion for this pursuit resonates on every page, whether she is discussing the book as a physical object or a particular work's influence. "Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different," she writes. "It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else's past. This may be disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times." A book in the spirit of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Elizabeth Hardwick's A View of My Own, Why I Read is iconoclastic, conversational, and full of insight. It will delight those who are already avid readers as well as neophytes in search of sheer literary fun.

The Lost Art of Reading

Author : David L. Ulin
Publisher : Sasquatch Books
ISBN 13 : 157061721X
Total Pages : 76 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (76 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lost Art of Reading by : David L. Ulin

Download or read book The Lost Art of Reading written by David L. Ulin and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading is a revolutionary act, an act of engagement in a culture that wants us to disengage. In The Lost Art of Reading, David L. Ulin asks a number of timely questions - why is literature important? What does it offer, especially now? Blending commentary with memoir, Ulin addresses the importance of the simple act of reading in an increasingly digital culture. Reading a book, flipping through hard pages, or shuffling them on screen - it doesn't matter. The key is the act of reading, and it's seriousness and depth. Ulin emphasizes the importance of reflection and pause allowed by stopping to read a book, and the accompanying focus required to let the mind run free in a world that is not one's own. Are we willing to risk our collective interest in contemplation, nuanced thinking, and empathy? Far from preaching to the choir, The Lost Art of Reading is a call to arms, or rather, to pages.

Wayfaring

Author : Alan Jacobs
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0802865682
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (28 download)

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Book Synopsis Wayfaring by : Alan Jacobs

Download or read book Wayfaring written by Alan Jacobs and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With Wayfaring, Jacobs continues his tradition of exploring Christian theology and experience by way of the essay-- Jacobs muses on the usefulness and dangers of blogging, the art of dictionary making, the world of Harry Potter, and an appreciation of trees."--Publisher's description.

Living into Focus

Author : Arthur Boers
Publisher : Baker Books
ISBN 13 : 1441236295
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (412 download)

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Book Synopsis Living into Focus by : Arthur Boers

Download or read book Living into Focus written by Arthur Boers and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today's high-speed culture, there's a prevailing sense that we are busier than ever before and that the pace of life is too rushed. Most of us can relate to the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time for the people and things we value most. We feel fragmented, overwhelmed by busyness and the tyranny of gadgets. Veteran pastor and teacher Arthur Boers offers a critical look at the isolating effects of modern life that have eroded the centralizing, focusing activities that people used to do together. He suggests ways to make our lives healthier and more rewarding by presenting specific individual and communal practices that help us focus on what really matters. These practices--such as shared meals, gardening, hospitality, walking, prayer, and reading aloud--bring our lives into focus and build community. The book includes questions for discernment and application and a foreword by Eugene H. Peterson.

On Reading Well

Author : Karen Swallow Prior
Publisher : Brazos Press
ISBN 13 : 1493415468
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (934 download)

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Book Synopsis On Reading Well by : Karen Swallow Prior

Download or read book On Reading Well written by Karen Swallow Prior and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ★ Publishers Weekly starred review A Best Book of 2018 in Religion, Publishers Weekly Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue, says acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior. In this book, she takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, original artwork throughout, and a foreword by Leland Ryken. The hardcover edition was named a Best Book of 2018 in Religion by Publishers Weekly. "[A] lively treatise on building character through books.'"--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me

Author : Ian Morgan Cron
Publisher : HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN 13 : 0849949297
Total Pages : 275 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (499 download)

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Book Synopsis Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by : Ian Morgan Cron

Download or read book Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me written by Ian Morgan Cron and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A touching memoir of life with an alcoholic father who secretly works with the CIA, a dark pilgrimage through the valley of depression and addiction, and finding a faith to redeem and a strength to forgive. "This is a record of my life as I remember it—but more importantly, as I felt it." At the age of sixteen, Ian Morgan Cron was told by his mother that his father, a motion picture executive, worked with the CIA in Europe. This astonishing revelation, coupled with his father's dark struggle with alcoholism, upended the world of a teenager struggling to become a man. Born into a family of privilege and power, Ian's life is populated with colorful people and stories as his father takes the family on a wild roller-coaster ride through wealth and poverty and back again. Decades later, as he faced his own personal demons, Ian realized that the only way to find peace was to voyage back through a painful childhood marked by extremes—privilege and poverty, violence and tenderness, truth and deceit—that he’d spent years trying to escape. A fast-paced, unique memoir about the power of forgiveness from the bestselling author of The Road Back to You Details his father’s struggle with alcohol and Cron’s own journey from addiction to twenty-three years of sobriety Encouragement to see God’s redemptive power through life’s struggles In this surprisingly funny and forgiving memoir, Ian reminds us that no matter how different the pieces may be, in the end we are all cut from the same cloth, stitched by faith into an exquisite quilt of grace.

The Lost Art of Reading

Author : David L. Ulin
Publisher : Sasquatch Books
ISBN 13 : 1632171953
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (321 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lost Art of Reading by : David L. Ulin

Download or read book The Lost Art of Reading written by David L. Ulin and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new introduction and afterword bring fresh relevance to this insightful rumination on the act of reading--as a path to critical thinking, individual and political identity, civic engagement, and resistance. The former LA Times book critic expands his short book, rich in ideas, on the consequence of reading to include the considerations of fake news, siloed information, and the connections between critical thinking as the key component of engaged citizenship and resistance. Here is the case for reading as a political act in both public and private gestures, and for the ways it enlarges the world and our frames of reference, all the while keeping us engaged.

How to Think

Author : Alan Jacobs
Publisher : Currency
ISBN 13 : 0451499603
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (514 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Think by : Alan Jacobs

Download or read book How to Think written by Alan Jacobs and published by Currency. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Absolutely splendid . . . essential for understanding why there is so much bad thinking in political life right now." —David Brooks, New York Times How to Think is a contrarian treatise on why we’re not as good at thinking as we assume—but how recovering this lost art can rescue our inner lives from the chaos of modern life. As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper’s, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America’s culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us—political, social, religious—Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we’re doomed to be divided, but because the people involved simply aren’t thinking. Most of us don’t want to think. Thinking is trouble. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits, and it can complicate our relationships with like-minded friends. Finally, thinking is slow, and that’s a problem when our habits of consuming information (mostly online) leave us lost in the spin cycle of social media, partisan bickering, and confirmation bias. In this smart, endlessly entertaining book, Jacobs diagnoses the many forces that act on us to prevent thinking—forces that have only worsened in the age of Twitter, “alternative facts,” and information overload—and he also dispels the many myths we hold about what it means to think well. (For example: It’s impossible to “think for yourself.”) Drawing on sources as far-flung as novelist Marilynne Robinson, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, and Christian theologian C.S. Lewis, Jacobs digs into the nuts and bolts of the cognitive process, offering hope that each of us can reclaim our mental lives from the impediments that plague us all. Because if we can learn to think together, maybe we can learn to live together, too.

Breaking Bread with the Dead

Author : Alan Jacobs
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1782835849
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (828 download)

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Book Synopsis Breaking Bread with the Dead by : Alan Jacobs

Download or read book Breaking Bread with the Dead written by Alan Jacobs and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Spectator Book of the Year It's fashionable to think of the writers of the past as irredeemably tarnished by prejudice. Aristotle despised women. John Milton, the great champion of free speech, wouldn't have granted it to Catholics. Edith Wharton's imaginative sympathies stopped short of her Jewish characters. But what if it is only through the works of such individuals that we can achieve a necessary perspective on the troubles of the present? Join literary scholar Alan Jacobs for a truly nourishing feast of learning. Discover what Homer can teach us about force, what Machiavelli has to say about reading and what Charlotte Brontë reveals about race. Not all the guests are people you might want to invite into your home, but they all bring something precious to the table. In Breaking Bread with the Dead, an omnivorous reader draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with minds across the ages, from Horace to Donna Haraway.

A Literate South

Author : Beth Barton Schweiger
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300245394
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis A Literate South by : Beth Barton Schweiger

Download or read book A Literate South written by Beth Barton Schweiger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative examination of literacy in the American South before emancipation, countering the long-standing stereotype of the South’s oral tradition Schweiger complicates our understanding of literacy in the American South in the decades just prior to the Civil War by showing that rural people had access to a remarkable variety of things to read. Drawing on the writings of four young women who lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Schweiger shows how free and enslaved people learned to read, and that they wrote and spoke poems, songs, stories, and religious doctrines that were circulated by speech and in print. The assumption that slavery and reading are incompatible—which has its origins in the eighteenth century—has obscured the rich literate tradition at the heart of Southern and American culture.

The Narnian

Author : Alan Jacobs
Publisher : Zondervan
ISBN 13 : 0060872691
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (68 download)

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Book Synopsis The Narnian by : Alan Jacobs

Download or read book The Narnian written by Alan Jacobs and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2006-08 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grade level: 9, 10, 11, 12, e, i, s.

I'd Rather Be Reading

Author : Anne Bogel
Publisher : Baker Books
ISBN 13 : 149341531X
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (934 download)

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Book Synopsis I'd Rather Be Reading by : Anne Bogel

Download or read book I'd Rather Be Reading written by Anne Bogel and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For so many people, reading isn't just a hobby or a way to pass the time--it's a lifestyle. Our books shape us, define us, enchant us, and even sometimes infuriate us. Our books are a part of who we are as people, and we can't imagine life without them. I'd Rather Be Reading is the perfect literary companion for everyone who feels that way. In this collection of charming and relatable reflections on the reading life, beloved blogger and author Anne Bogel leads readers to remember the book that first hooked them, the place where they first fell in love with reading, and all of the moments afterward that helped make them the reader they are today. Known as a reading tastemaker through her popular podcast What Should I Read Next?, Bogel invites book lovers into a community of like-minded people to discover new ways to approach literature, learn fascinating new things about books and publishing, and reflect on the role reading plays in their lives. The perfect gift for the bibliophile in everyone's life, I'd Rather Be Reading will command an honored place on the overstuffed bookshelves of any book lover.