Thursday, April 15, 2010

Tedious and Brief

Day 65 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. Today, due to an Internet connection problem, which somehow miraculously "fixed itself" last time, I will be tedious and brief. (I am rude and unmechanical.)

Ed is reading I Told Me So, by Gregg A. Ten Elshof, subtitled Self-Deception and the Christian Life. He says he is reading it to hone his critical thinking skills, for a course in critical thinking that he teaches at the local community college. "I want to know how my students think, or why they don't."

To this end, he is also reading Teaching With Your Mouth Shut, by Donald L. Finkel, about teaching as leading rather than telling. Ed says just about everything he reads these days is "to help me do what I do...better."

So, in addition to these teaching-specific books that help him do his job better, he is, in the ongoing simultaneous reading habit of many people I have talked to during this project, also reading Wendell Berry and James Herriot books that he has handy at home, and hoping to read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

He has been waiting for The Omnivore's Dilemma to come into Babbitt's, but it doesn't. So he located it at the local cancer center, which has an excellent library of nutrition books, including all of Michael Pollan's recent books on food.

Where have I put my copy of The Botany of Desire? (And I have not forgotten that I promised to tell you about the spate of books I read with "desire" in the title...during a period of my life that was, well, tedious and brief.)

3 comments:

Douglas Robillard said...

Haw! I like those "Midsummer Night's Dream" jokes!

Kathleen said...

Douglas, if you like that, click on Chicago Reader (1987) on the sidebar. It is a letter to the editor about Best American Short Stories 1987.

Paul D. Adams said...

Thanks for this mention of Ten Elshof's book.
FWIW: I just put up an extensive summary/review of I Told Me So here.