Smart comes before Strong and the fastest way to smarts is reading. Whether on the web, in print, or via the fastest and most efficient technology — the book — reading accelerates your path to smarts. So this section, titled POW READING shows you how to grow step by step, master speed and deep reading (needs another item in parallel – I’ll add it) — the skills that count. Based on several decades of research and experience teaching advanced reading skills to adults, my system never fails: it not only helps improve speed and comprehension, but also leads to clarity in writing and thinking. And when you get the knack of it, it’ll bring you joy.
Let’s start by considering the following questions:
Why Can’t a Woman Read Like a Man?
All books are either dreams or swords. You can cut or you can drug with words.
Amy Lowell
Reading scares tyrants: when the Nazis invaded Poland and planned to enslave its people, the Generals wrote, “…reading is not desirable.” In states of the slave south, it was okay to reach other skills, but it was illegal to teach reading. And when upper and middle class women began to read widely (mostly novels), a threat was seen to existing social structures and efforts were made to restrict the content of their reading to “…a home feeling – a sweet bond of family union – and a… source of domestic enjoyment.” From the dawn of women’s literacy, writers warned that “…a woman should beware of all these books, like as of serpents or snakes.”
Still, when women gained access to literacy and books, we absorbed ideas and used them to advance our lives and causes. Yet today, with easy access to all kinds of reading, girls and young women often choose romance fiction rather than using reading as a tool of success and independence in the world. Think about what you’ve read in the last week. Have you only consumed social media or fiction? Or have you used reading as the quickest way to learn anything? Use the space below to add a short reading diary.
What do you read?
Consider reading more like a man. Not that men read better than women do; they read differently. They read instrumentally. Let’s define instrumental reading as reading that serves as a means, a tool of learning to enable one to accomplish whatever she dreams of. Just as you can choose to wear a sequined shirt to the next party but understand that a bathing suit works better in the pool, you can choose Facebook to link up with your pals but you also can choose to read a biography of a woman who does great things in the world. Or set up a reading group to talk about articles or books that promise to help shape your life and work. Or ask for a gift subscription to an informative magazine like Aviation Week or Ms.or The Atlantic.
Let’s adapt the quotation (chapter, session, how shall we describe the topics?) All books are either dreams or swords. You can cut or you can drug with words to say that we women read to dream but we must also read to cut, a style of reading that involves not only what you read but how you read.
the word grandma 