So....no I am not finished with "All The King's Men", but I am getting there. I have maybe 50 more pages to go. It is a great book so I am not so sure why it is taking me so damn long to get through it. It might have something to do with 8,000 stitches of my cross stitch project, or maybe my binge watching of Helix or Fringe or 12 Monkeys....maybe.
I have found in my advancing years that fiction is harder to read. It scares me that I might be losing my sense of literary adventure for more stodgy things like non-fiction...gasp! When I was younger you couldn't get me to crack a non-fiction book unless it was for homework or astrology. It just didn't happen. Michael was the opposite. He spent most of his life reading non-fiction and is now swimming in the great make believe sea of words known as the novel. Life is spectacular that way.
In addition to reading "All The King's Men" and "The Buddhist's Handbook", I am also teaching myself Basic Statistics from an online text that is 684 pages long. Let's hope I finish a few things.
On a trip to the library this week to return some items, I found Ian Leslie's book "Curious" on a stand on the shelf. I was curious about "Curious". I liked the owl and his quizzical look.
I love choosing books by their covers. It lets art lead art. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. I have made it through a lengthy introduction and the first 15 pages and I am hooked. "Curious" is a book that pulls apart the types and phases of curiosity. It explains why it is important for learning more than anything else, and why today's high paced, very connected society is less curious than generations before.
It was interesting to think about how there was a great boom in technology and intelligence once the printing press was invented. Finally there was a way to spread our individual experiences, experiments, and findings. The world blossomed and grew. One would think that in the face of the internet that this would happen again. We have access to so many remote places in the world. Ian Leslie states this isn't true. The internet has spawned a large generation of people with surface curiosity. These people are not deep thinkers and might not investigate further the new found piece of information or technology.
It talks about how we are stripping away, essentially, the imagination of today's kids by focusing them on only one type of academic path. Teaching is hyper-focused onto what the kid should become rather than letting the child think and decide for themselves.
I'm not very far into the book yet but I look forward to figuring out how to re-infuse the curiosity back into our world.
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