Contemplative Reading: Harvesting the Wisdom
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot
Recently, I’ve been reevaluating my reading life, wondering how to deepen it and harvest the lessons and wisdom from all the books I read. I realized that while I read many books, it was becoming about the number of books, keeping up with my goals, and exceeding them. It was about the numbers, not about what the books had to offer, what they had to teach, what wisdom they had to impart. Ultimately, I have been re-considering my why.
I want to read for enjoyment and to learn and broaden my horizons. Those things are an innate part of reading, but pausing at the end of a book to harvest lessons, pain points, and ah-ha moments is an unexpected deepening practice. I make sure to keep this step small-I want it to be manageable and fun and not so laborious that it distracts me from reading.
Pausing to harvest the lessons from any book draws me towards self-awareness, wisdom, and deeper insights that have surprised me.
I’ve adopted a few practices that I find helpful. Instead of turning the last page and reaching for the next book, I’m pausing to explore the lessons, the characters, and the challenges. I’m noticing what characters or ideas I like and resonate with. I’m also seeing what I didn’t like and digging deeper to ask why. I’m noting what lessons or ideas I want to take with me and what I want to leave behind.
I’ve been surprised to stumble into meaningful insights from several fiction books, things I would never have realized if not for the brief pause to gather the insights and lessons as I read.
I don’t have a set practice. I pause with each book and see what seems to work best. Sometimes it’s been using lists, other times asking questions, and sometimes it’s just choosing one highlight that seemed to capture my attention or hold wisdom I want to explore.
Some Suggested Contemplative Reading Practices:
Reading Journal: The role of this journal is to process the book. I don’t use the journal for a book report or to rank or rate the book. I’m looking for deeper invitations, how my heart was moved, or how the character or story spoke to something in my spirit. It’s been helpful to have one journal just for this practice.
Asking Questions: I don’t have a set list of questions. Fiction books require different questions than non-fiction books. I aim to ask myself or the text questions and see what insights come. I don’t worry that I write a lot. Just a sentence or two is good.
I ask myself questions like:
Did I relate to one character more than another? Why?
Did I find a particular character off-putting? Why?
What part of the story do I recognize from something in my life?
Is there something that made me uneasy, fearful, or anxious about the story?
Does something about the character reveal something to me about parts of my life or personality that I can’t see, my own shadow?
Highlight Review: I review the passages I’ve highlighted. I read a lot of books on Kindle. It’s easy to highlight, and I find it helpful to review everything I’ve highlighted at the end of a book. (On Kindle, you can see all your highlights in one place).
I’m looking to see:
Is there a theme from the highlights?
Does one particular highlight capture a key takeaway or learning for me?
How does a particular highlight relate to the current realities of my life?
Is there a theme or pattern from my highlights, both in the recent book and what I highlight in general?
Do the passages I highlight point to a common question, growth area, or place I need to lean into to learn more?
What do the highlighted passages tell me about my values, questions, growth, and/or blind spots?
Lists: I’ve come to love lists. The beauty of a list is it can capture and reveal a lot, but it’s low impact. A list frees me from the pressure of “proper writing” I can just jot down ideas, reflections, and insights.
Some Lists for Contemplative Reading:
What did I like about this book?
What didn’t I like about this book?
What will I take from this book?
What themes did I notice?
What is the characteristic of the character I relate to the most?
What parts of that character do I find unsettling or off-putting?
What do I want to remember about this book?
What do I want to continue to ponder from this book?
“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert
Pause with a book you finished, recently finished, or has been a long-time favorite, and ask yourself some questions about the book.
Jot some lists, write notes, and look at your favorite quotes.
Try developing your contemplative reading practice. This isn’t confined to books. Do you watch movies or have just finished Ted Lasso? All those things work too!
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
I checked this book out from the library because it’s often on banned book lists and is part of a community reading giveaway program with our local independent bookstore. It’s so good to read about the life of someone whose life has given them different experiences and insights.
Were there parts that made me uncomfortable and, quite frankly, sad? Yes.
Did those parts remind me that all people have stories and experiences that are personal, painful, and sometimes scary? Yes.
Did I finish the book so thankful for how George M. Johnson courageously shared the truths of his life, yes?
Was I inspired and touched by how his mama and nana loved and protected him in a world that didn’t understand and sometimes sought to silence him? Yes.
This was a book about love and how unconditional love protects, insulates, and launches. I’m so glad I read it.
“Love isn’t a word that we have to use with each other, because for us it has always been an action. We have always been able to show our love for each other through our care. Through our ability to often be on the same page. And even if we aren’t, through our ability to get right back on it within hours.”
― George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue
I’m not quite finished with On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Books by Karen Swallow Prior, but I’m sharing some quotes from this book to consider. Read each quote slowly, and notice if a word or phrase stands out to you. Pause with that quote briefly and see how it might relate to or inform your reading or life!
Reading literature, more than informing us, forms us.
Reading well entails discerning which visions of life are false and which are good and true—as well as recognizing how deeply rooted these visions are in language.
The ultimate test of a book, or of an interpretation, is the difference it would make in the conduct of life
We have never lived enough. Our experience is, without fiction, too confined and too parochial. Literature extends it, making us reflect and feel about what might otherwise be too distant for feeling. . . . All living is interpreting; all action requires seeing the world as something. So in this sense, no life is “raw,” and . . . throughout our living we are, in a sense, makers of fiction. The point is that in the activity of literary imagining, we are led to imagine and describe with greater precision, focusing our attention on each word, feeling each event more keenly—whereas much of actual life goes by without that heightened awareness and is thus, in a certain sense, not fully or thoroughly lived.46 Great books offer perspectives more than lessons. Literature shows us “how a different character, a situation, an event seems from different angles and perspectives, and even then how inexact our knowledge remains.” 47 Literature replicates the world of the concrete, where the experiential learning necessary for virtue occurs. Such experiential learning does not come through technique. “One learns it by guidance rather than by a formula.” 48 Reading and interpreting literature notoriously lacks hard and fast rules
(Nussbaum, as quoted in On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Books by Karen Swallow Prior
