the joy of reading
TRANSCRIPT
THE JOY OF READINGTHE JOY OF READING
M. HARIKUMARM. HARIKUMAR
25 DEC 201125 DEC 2011
READING IS THE MOST SOLITARY ,
CONTEMPLATIVE AND LONG LASTING OF
ALL THE AESTHETIC PLEASURES
• A Complex (?) definition
• Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols to construct or derive meaning. It is a means of language acquisition, communication and sharing information and ideas
“ Every (wo)man who knows how to read has it in his/her power to magnify him/herself, to multiply the ways in which (s)he exists, to make his/her life full, significant and interesting”
Aldus Huxley
“.......it consoles, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wider kind. It is a moral illumination”
Reading is a fine art
In order to be better at anything – reading, writing, tennis, chess , public speaking - is to practice. The more you read ,the smarter you are. The more words you are exposed to, the more of language you see and have experience with , the better you are able to express and write
Gifts of readingReduces stress
Greater tranquility
Increases analytical thinking
Improves memory
Improves writing skills
Talk intelligently
We make time for what is important to us
Sources: Where to find books/magazines ?
From Library to Cybrary
E- book ( Kindle – Amazon. COM)
Flip kart
And of course – bookshops
Amazon.com
How to find good books? How to find good books?
ReviewsReviews (Don’t believe all of them )(Don’t believe all of them )
FriendsFriends
ReferencesReferences
Skimming & scanning in Libraries / Lending Skimming & scanning in Libraries / Lending LibrariesLibraries
Book shopsBook shops
HH
A Private Library - Antilibrary
Umberto Eco belongs the small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful and non-dull. He is the owner of a large personal library more than 30,000 books
A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool
“You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older. The more you know the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call the collection of unread books as “antilibrary”
Reading skills:
Scanning :
a useful first step before reading more deeply
Skimming:
handy when you are looking for particular things in a text
FAST READINGFAST READING
Rich Vocabulary is a must
Eye motion : See blocks words instead of a single word
( Former US Prez John Kennedy had a very high reading speed)
Regression: unnecessary re-reading
Concentration
Environment
Engineers are in general not good readers is a fact. Their knowledge on non technical subjects tends to near zero.
Why?
So far I am yet to find a definite answer
( The only exception I know is Anand the famous Malayalam novelist /short story writer, a product of CET )
• What to read?
• “Any written material” is the answer
• From Plato to Playboy
Film songs
Innle neeyouru sundara ragamayen ponnodakkuzhalil vannolichu……….
P. Bhaskaran
ComicsComics
• Phantom Lee Folk
• Asterix
• Bobanum Molliym
• Cartoons of Gopikrishnan
PoetryHow to start reading and enjoying poetry?
Vallattholl
Browning
Of course don’t forget dictionaries
Advanced learner’s Dictionary - School level
Longman’ Active English
Collins Co-build
Mac Millan’s book of Phrases
Longman’s Activator Dictionary
• Phrases
• “Carry coals to Newcastle”
• Achilles Heel
• “Stay put” - If you stay put you remain in a place, job etc and do not try to move from it
American dictionariesWebsterRandom House
Thesaurus
Modern English usage Michael Swan
“Origin of words”
“How to build Vocabulary” series
English news papers
Editorials, Central page article, Opp. Ed page
Prasannarajan
Rajakrishnan
M P Narayana Pillai
Prof M. Krishnan Nair
• Time,
• Economist,
Magazines
• Time Essay, Cover story
History
ToynbeeSecond world warThird Reich, Auschwitz, StalingradNuremberg
Jawaharlal Nehru
Autobiographies
My experiments with truthThe Report to Greco, WordsKannirum Kinavum
Classics
Upanishads
RamayanaMahabharataThirukuralIliad Odysseus
Les MiserablesCrime and PunishmentJean Christofe
Short stories
The fate of a man : SolokovBest 10 short stories in Malayalam
NovelsGarcia Marcus, Kazantzakis
Sartre, Camus, Kafka
Arogyaniketanam, YayatiSundarikalum sundaranmarum
The inimitable BasheerM T Vasudevan Nair,AnandO V Vijayan
Non fiction
Future Shock and other books – Alvin Toffler
The end of history and the last man
The Clash of Civilization
The world is flat
The Lexus and the Olive tree
HumorCatch -22 ...
MAD (now Extinct) Cartoon magazine
Thrillers and Pulp fiction
Sydney Sheldon,Jeffrey ArcherFrederick Forsyth, Chetan Bhagat
And the immortal Sherlock Homes series
Dramas
Ibsen
Ionesco
Camus
Tennessee Williams
Pirandello
C J Thomas
• Science fiction– Arthur Clarke– “ 2001 ASPACE ODYSSEY”– Isac Asimov
Popular Science
Carl Sagan
Paul Davies
“ A brief history of nearly every thing “ by Bill Bryson
“The Ascent of man”
And finally your subject - ENGINEERING
Example “Digital Communication”
Read at least three of four books on the same Subject. Note how different authors approach the same topic. It gives you a better insight. And Read half a dozen papers also on selective topicsSay “spread spectrum”
• And Certain things are to be seen working
• before you can effectively introduce those subjects in the class - examples
• Gyroscope
• SNMP
Quotations
“The London bridge is falling down...falling down...falling down...”
a nursery rhyme
This forms one line in the famous poem “The waste Land” by T S Eliot showing the degradation of culture
The famous Beginnings.....
It was love at first sight” Joseph Heller Catch -22
“It was best of the times.... “ Dickens
“ Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” ... GarciaMarquez
• Call me Ishamel” Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• “Mother died today. Or may be yesterday; I don’tknow...” Camus
Jot down sentences and ideas you like from what you read
“ In my younger days I wanted to play cricket badly. Finally I got an opportunity to play and I did it. I played badly”
Shashi Tharoor
“If omnipresence is a sign of divinity, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi qualifies for it”
Time Magazine review of the movie
“The making of a mahatma”
“...Some created history by arriving at the scene like MahatmaGandhi from South Africa, Lenin in a train to Finland station; some created history by refusing to leave the scene like Rosa Parks from a Montgomery city bus in the state of Alabama”
Time Millennium issue
“All cities are monuments: Tokyo symbolizes the victory of the new over the old; Lisbon the legacy of exploration; Calcutta a tribute to colonialism and Rome man’s most poignant footstone to war.......”
• Time Magazine
“We fought a military war; our opponents a political one; we sought physical attrition; our opponents psychological extinction ; In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla warfare: The guerrilla wins if he does not lose; a conventional army loses if it does not win...”
Henry Kissinger
Churchill’s prophetic words:
Guess about who?
“rogues, rascals and free booters...... “
Vaclav Havel :
Czech Independence day – from Presidential speech
“ My dear fellow citizens , for 40 years you heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme; how our country was flourishing, how many millions of steel we produced, how happy we were all ,how we trusted our government and what bright prospects were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for the office so that I too would lie to you. Our country is not flourishing... The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated environment; we feel morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension.....”
During the sixty plus years of my existence(?), I came across bureaucracy , bad , worst , cruel and many times , - inhuman and criminal
It may be so for so many others
Why?
• “When you have disciplined people you don’t need hierarchy; When you have disciplined thought you don’t need bureaucracy . When you have disciplined action you don’t need excessive control. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic entrepreneurship you get the magic alchemy of great performance...”
• An Utopia??????
I hope the following para will help you think of I hope the following para will help you think of an answer ( Jim Collins in Good to Great)an answer ( Jim Collins in Good to Great)
Thank You