Reading Into Things

 

I am almost 400 posts into my "Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet" series, which are excerpts without commentary from books I've recently read. Reading is such an important leisure activity for me as an introvert, to decompress in the solitude of my nose in a book. Of course beyond the act itself is the information conveyed in the act, which entertains and educates and challenges and inspires.

It has been helpful, in recent years, to be intentional about diversifying my titles, from almost exclusively non-fiction written by white men to all kinds of genres and perspectives. I am still more into non-fiction than fiction, but have greatly enjoyed and benefited from working more fiction into my rotation. I've definitely tried to seek out authors whose life perspective is different from mine; I've found that to be a helpful reminder that people are different from me and from each other, and that that's a good thing because we learn and grow when we are confronted with varied perspectives.

I hope that my approach to absorbing content is to be both open-minded and critical. I don't shy away from and sometimes seek out perspectives I don't agree with, and try to be respectful of the thought process or life perspective contained in those words. But I also do not blindly accept everything I read, and while I'm open to a lot of varying opinions I do believe there are such things as absolute rights and wrongs and I want to make sure my mind is properly filtering new information from that lens.

I do not assume that anyone reading my posts agrees with me on everything; in fact, I would hate that as that would mean I have created my own echo chamber and am worse for it. I also do not assume that I haven't offended folks with what or who I've quoted, and I want to be more sensitive about that and err on the side of not causing anyone harm. I do hope that you enjoy and benefit from most of the excerpts I share; I certainly have and it's for that reason I share them.