Reverting to Type a Reader Story eBook Alan Jacobs
Download As PDF : Reverting to Type a Reader Story eBook Alan Jacobs 
Since the publication of my book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, a number of people have asked me about my history as a reader what I read when I was younger, how my reading shaped my own development, and so on. They are sometimes surprised to learn that almost all of my reading, before my college years, involved science (especially astronomy) and science fiction. In transforming myself into a literary reader — so literary that I became an English professor — I was in many ways making quite a break with my readerly past.
But in the last decade or so I have found myself gradually shifting back towards those early interests. I haven’t ceased to be a literary reader, by any means, but my old attractions to science and technology, and to fictions that explore science and technology, have reasserted themselves.
So largely in order to make sense of this matter for myself, I wrote an essay — a brief reader’s memoir — about my shifting allegiances. I think the story is worth reading not because I am especially interesting but because it makes a few valuable points about the shaping power of our early reading experiences, and about the relations between what C. P. Snow famously called “The Two Cultures” of the sciences and the humanities.
Reverting to Type a Reader Story eBook Alan Jacobs
I just really like Jacobs, and I read most of what he writes in print and online. I found it really enjoyable while rocking my newborn in the wee hours to hear Jacobs provide an autobiographical addendum to his great little book, "The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction." He justifies reading-for-pleasure-based-on-your-current-whim via his own interesting story.A characteristic quote:
"In many respects, going back to the kinds of books I used to read has also meant going back to the kinds of reading habits I used to have. Just as there was a point in my life when I had to remind myself to grab that pencil, the time eventually came when I had to remind myself to leave it where it was and grasp the book (or the Kindle) in my two otherwise empty hands. The object now was not to prepare for class or develop a scholarly argument, but rather to become lost in a book, as I once was often; to be self-forgetful for a while. Indeed, I wonder whether it’s significant that my reversion to type started happening smack in the middle of middle age, in a period of life when the world is almost always too much with us, when time alone is is rare and, let’s face it, rarely seized — especially by people with smartphones."
Here's another:
"I have seen the great value of heeding my whims and allowing myself to read beyond my professional demands and even my long-established sense of self. My reversion to type has been above all else interesting, and has given me an increasingly broad (and I think more accurate) sense of what reading is, or can be, for."
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Reverting to Type a Reader Story eBook Alan Jacobs Reviews
Ostensibly a companion to his "Pleasures of Reading" this short work is enjoyable for anyone who loves to read. I haven't read the book, but found this interesting just as a journey of a fellow reader. I only gave 4 stars because I know almost nothing of math and science, the other disciplines Jacobs enjoys.
I appreciated Jacobs's Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. And as this essay continues the questions and musings of that project, in found it similarly stimulating.
An insightful (and humorous) look at how the author's love for reading developed, and how, subsequent to becoming a literature professor, he circled back to his early reading genres. He discusses the dismissive attitudes between the arts and the sciences from the viewpoint of reading. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
This autobiographical essay accompanies Professor Jacobs's The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, published in May of 2011. We learn about the books that mattered to him as a child and teenager (you may be surprised), how he got through his first semester of graduate school (Tolkien), and the renewal of his interest, in later adulthood, in various things scientific, mathematical, and technological (like Linux). He also riffs on the literary/genre fiction problem, the experiences and habits of reading (who else in the academy does this? it's delightful), modern literary and textual criticism, and the evolution of C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures" idea. As always he draws on an enormous and varied database of quotations, and delivers his own smooth prose.
I bought it the day it came out, and in this edition (perhaps there will be others?) there were several typos and omitted words most notably in his quotation of William Carlos Williams's slogan, "No [ideas] but in things."
I just really like Jacobs, and I read most of what he writes in print and online. I found it really enjoyable while rocking my newborn in the wee hours to hear Jacobs provide an autobiographical addendum to his great little book, "The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction." He justifies reading-for-pleasure-based-on-your-current-whim via his own interesting story.
A characteristic quote
"In many respects, going back to the kinds of books I used to read has also meant going back to the kinds of reading habits I used to have. Just as there was a point in my life when I had to remind myself to grab that pencil, the time eventually came when I had to remind myself to leave it where it was and grasp the book (or the ) in my two otherwise empty hands. The object now was not to prepare for class or develop a scholarly argument, but rather to become lost in a book, as I once was often; to be self-forgetful for a while. Indeed, I wonder whether it’s significant that my reversion to type started happening smack in the middle of middle age, in a period of life when the world is almost always too much with us, when time alone is is rare and, let’s face it, rarely seized — especially by people with smartphones."
Here's another
"I have seen the great value of heeding my whims and allowing myself to read beyond my professional demands and even my long-established sense of self. My reversion to type has been above all else interesting, and has given me an increasingly broad (and I think more accurate) sense of what reading is, or can be, for."
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