How to Read a Book: 009, Elementary Reading, The First Level

It’s elementary …

August 20, 2025 · Mario Jason Braganza

How to Read a Book: 008, More On the Activity and the Art of Reading

On Enlightenment and Discovery

August 19, 2025 · Mario Jason Braganza

How to Read a Book: 007, Highlights from the Activity and the Art of Reading

image courtesy, Simon & Schuster Paraphrased and excerpted as usual … Thinking is vitally important, but the modern world does not let us … One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, (the “consumer” of modern internet streams —mjb) is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for one to “make up one’s own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up their own mind at all. Instead, they inserts a packaged opinion into their mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. They then push a button and “play back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. They have performed acceptably without having had to think. ...

August 18, 2025 · Mario Jason Braganza

How to Read a Book: 006, Own Your Book

Scratch, scribble, mark and dog ear them!

August 13, 2025 · Mario Jason Braganza

2025

All the Titles from 2025

August 1, 2025 · Mario Jason Braganza

Observations as I Learn to Read, 2

Avoid long slogs

July 8, 2025 · Mario Jason Braganza