Name: The well-educated mind
ISBN: 9780393080964

The well-educated mind

Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven't because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise. In her previous book, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children, and that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In this new book, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading. The Well-Educated Mindoffers brief, entertaining histories of five literary genres--fiction, autobiography, history, drama, and poetry--accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter--ranging from Cervantes to A. S. Byatt, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich--preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing. The Well-Educated Mindreassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there's no reason you can't read and enjoy Shakespeare's Sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the "Great Books" without a guide and a plan.

What Hacker News says

tw1010Sep 2017

If you want to learn how to program, surely you would go asking the software engineering community how to do it? But rarely do we pay attention to how the people who're serious about reading and writing say you're actually supposed to read. I thought I knew how to read a book. But then I read the Well-Educated Mind and realized that I had went about it all wrong. English majors read books way differently than most people do. It is crucially important for retention and understanding of a book to actually write down thorough notes about it.

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manyxcxiApr 2016

I recently stumbled on a podcast I found very interesting that relates: The Art of Manliness #189: The Classical Education You Never Had [0] They had an author (Susan Bauer) on discussing topics from her book The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had [1], where they discussed the differences between a classical education and today's modern education (in America).

One of the salient points was where she described today's method of reading literature and stopping every few pages/chapters and discussing what you think/feel about it and your interpretation. She made the argument that these students are being taught to come to conclusions and judge things before getting the full picture, and human nature being what it is, we stick with that judgement even as we learn more. She went on to say that instead of this, a more classical approach would be to read the whole book first, then go back through and discuss those interesting sections and come to conclusions with the whole picture.

I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my list now- the entire episode was very interesting and thoughtful and I'm going to check out more of their podcasts as well.

[0] http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/04/04/podcast-189-the-cla...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039308096X

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