Strategies for Reading

The first thing I noticed when I started reading this assignment was the quote at the beginning. Francis Bacon stated, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested". I thought this quote was reasonable and true. The tasted books are the books that readers just read to read. There really isn't any meaning behind it except for enjoyment. When I hear the words tasted, it symbolizes a treat or mouth-watering satisfaction. The swallowed books are the books that readers read and understand. Perhaps maybe store away in our memory for awhile. Lastly, the chewed and digest books are for readers to understand and meditate on what they have read. Its moreso for long-term purposes. I personally am not a fan of reading. I don't like to read for assignments and seldomly I will read for enjoyment. However, I noticed as I was reading, that I have to be able to distinguish pleasure reading and academic reading. I also realized that I am a passive reader. Sometimes I have to read lines and words over and over again just to understand what I have read. This usually happens when I am completely uninterested in the reading. I'm not too interested in annotation either. To me, it complicates the reading more. I personally like the skeleton outline. However, during the Black Elvis reading, I felt the skeleton outline was unneccesary because the story was self explanatory. I believe that poems and lyrics are closely related because music is a form of poetry and art to me. Most poems rhyme as lyrics do also. Lyrics sometimes use metaphors and symbolizism just like poetry. However, they differ because poetry usually consists of a few words or stanzas. Lyrics consists of bars. In a song called Flashing Lights, Kanye West stated, " Like a flight with no visa, first class with the seat back I still see ya...In my past, you on the other side of the glass...like my memories museum...I'm just saying hey Mona Lisa you know you can't roll without Caesar". To me this song lyric could also be used as poetry. There is a lot of symbolizism and metaphoric action going on in this bar, just like poetry. Illustrations and collages are another way to express poems. There is a saying, " A picture is worth a thousand words". I believe this is a true statement. On page 85 of the Strategies for Reading book, there is a collage of the short story "The Welcome Table". A quote is in the collage and it states, " Ever wonder where we'd be if history had been herstory"? To some this may be a statement, to me it was poetry. This quote could have gone so many ways. Overall, I thought this reading assignment was rather long but I have formed a new insight on reading and how to approach it.