How to Better Internalize the Books You Read
A reflection from Charlotte Mason's book A Philosophy of Education
For a life-long bookworm, finding the time and desire to read isn’t typically a problem—you’ll catch us hidden in a closet reading a few pages before the kids start screaming or curled up in bed with a bedside lamp on while the rest of the house snores. We carry books with us to read while waiting in line or in an office. We know how to use those tiny pockets of time to cram fifty or more books in by the end of the year. But remembering all the content we read… that can be the difficult part.
We read often because we love stories and expanding our knowledge. Our brains are hungry for ideas and we are eager to feed them with the best of literary ideas. We don’t want all this knowledge we poured over to simply fall out of our heads while we read the next great book—yet it often does. We gnaw on our bottom lip as we glance at the bookshelf, wondering what that blue-spine book was about. We flip past the bright pink highlighted section and wonder why we even emphasized that line.
As busy (and sometimes scatter-brained) people, how do we better retain the words we read? Perhaps we can look to the words of a wise educator from the 1800–1900s: Charlotte Mason.
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