The Well-Educated Mind

After trying a few different approaches to the daily reading habit and finding that none of them quite fit my life or reading style, a conversation with a friend led me to Susan Wise Bauer's _The Well-Educated Mind_. I knew her books aimed at parents educating their kids, but this one's aimed at adults focused on their own self-education.

Her approach is not far different from Charlotte Mason's, with the exception of focusing on reading one book at time (something totally alien to my own usual approach, but a habit I'm willing to build, if it will help me cut down on the temptation to flit from subject to subject, never quite finishing up a single one).

Bauer models her recommendations on the trivium -- in each area of study, first you gather the basic information, then you evaluate and analyze, then you form and express your own opinions on the subject. (the three stages: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric)

She recommends starting off by reading for half an hour, 4 days a week, and keeping a journal, like a Commonplace book, in which you jot down quotes or ideas that stand out, write down a few sentences that summarize the day's reading, and note any questions or arguments that come to mind. That's what I'm going to be doing here (although the while-reading notes will go in a notebook - those are likely to be mostly lists of books or authors or words to look up).

Her emphasis is on the Great Books, so she's assuming her readers are going to go on to focus on novels, autobiographies, or histories. That's not my plan, at least not this year, but I think her approach will work just as well for the broad reading I'm planning to do.

I welcome anyone interested in discussing whatever book I'm currently working on reading (I'm happy to discuss past ones, too, as I start building up more of a collection of entries, here).