What I Learned From Reading (Week 1)

Annie and I have solidly chosen careers in Education, so it's only fitting that we spend this December sharing what we've learned this year.

This year I did a bit of reading. No where CLOSE to what Annie did as you will soon see, but a respectable amount for me. Here are a few of the things that stood out from this year's reading:

Read more than one immigrant story
One of my favorite books this year was Thi Bui's "The Best We Could Do". It's such an interesting story about immigration and its multi-generational impact. News tells only one immigrant story, but novels, film, and your neighbors might tell you another.

Voting is a privilege that should be celebrated
"Taking Back the Vote" by Jane Eisner looked at how the voting age was changed to 18; it wasn't that easy. Eisner discussed how difficult it can be to vote, and how much more we should respect our rights to vote. Voting should be done in community with celebration and delight. I put my learning into practice by having a couple of voting parties this year - Give it a try in 2020.

The Bahai'i religion is interesting
I learned a lot more about the Bahai'i faith this year, first through reading Rainn Wilson's biography "The Bassoon King" and second by visiting the only Bahai'i temple in North America. It's an interesting religion that you should definitely do some reading on. I love its focus social justice; something we could all use a little bit more of in our daily lives.

As Wilson quotes in his book:
"Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer to the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge... Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be... a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge, a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, a shining light in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility."

There's so much to learn about the English Language
"Dreyer's English" by Benjamin Dreyer was inspirational. I laughed out loud multiple times...at a grammar book. I also learned things, including ones I feel like I should've known before. For example:

"Leornardo da Vinci - Quite literally, Renaissance man...His name is, indeed, Leonardo and he oughtn't to be referred to as "Da Vinci." Vinci is where he was from; it's not his name. That novel by Dan Brown has done much to blunt this particular point, but getting this right remains a laudable thing to do."

Of course I read many other books and learned many other things. And that's really the whole point of reading isn't it? I'm not sure we would read if it didn't teach us something new about the world we live in.