Reading Books – a cooking pot and twisted tales

@beyondexisting.j
Born a crime Trevor Noah #reading #hobby #trevornoah #Ilovereading #books #fypシ゚viral #passion #favouritethings #bookreview #bookrecommendations Trevor Noah’s book is a gritty, hilarious and poignant memoir that shares his experiences growing up in a racially charged Apartheid South Africa. A delightful read that evoked every emotion in me.#CapCut
♬ Commando – Mavokali

I find such questions like ‘who is your favourite author and why‘ truly mundane and it almost seems as if eclectic, voracious readers like me are strange. I had to give this a hard thought and sadly came up short in choosing a favourite fiction, non-fiction author or writer.

Again like colors’, it makes me wonder why I can’t simply be simple in my choices and just pick a name. I usually don’t sit on the fence when it comes to voicing my opinion even if it is a dissenting thought and I can be a bit too straightforward in saying what I think or feel.

I love reading and when I was pretty young, I stuck with my Enid Blyton’s and my teenage years were spent reading uncountable numbers of Harlequins, Mill & Boons, Hadley Chase, Tom Clancy, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and many more.

My reading tastes has been generally diversified and having taken an in-depth look at why this might be so, I have arrived at the conclusion that it is because I like multiple things, I see the world from multiple perspective, that I am a pluralist and many things are good and not just a singular thing.

I also see that liking different things will ultimately improves my social life and that’s fine not to fit into a mould clustering around any particular taste. Liking multiple things makes me, me.

Without trying to sound proud, I think that a wide taste in reading is a sign of intelligence, of intellectual curiosity, open mindedness, and a willingness to absorb new ideas.

Sometimes, I find that though a lot of people can be extremely intelligent but have very closed minds but the love of all kinds of literary genres implies the love of creativity, of actively seeking out new approaches and ideas and the ability to appreciate different paradigms.

So many times, I have registered for an online program with a lot of enthusiasm, but halfway through it all, I just barely limp to finish or my interest wane’s completely and after settling down to analyse why my interest wavers, I got to realize way back before now, that for me to maintain an optimum balanced interest in a learning activity, it’s got to be interactive enough.

I like bashing ideas with other people, loosening the screws and bolts of a theory and piecing it back together, that way, years from when I learnt it, it stays with me.

I got to realize that though rote learning might work for a lot of people, to a large extent, I can do well by rote learning but I excel by interactive learning.

I would have returned to school long before now but due to family exigencies, I have been pushing it to the side. As a matter of fact, I registered for a Communication Arts program, but because it was online, I backed out and didn’t bother starting it off. I knew that within a few months, I would be bored to tears with it all.

Same issue cropped up with a program I enrolled for at the University of London, due to it’s online/distance learning nature, I had to be truthful to myself, knowing that I would probably start but not finish it and then waste money unnecessarily.

What works best for me really is reading on my own, then bringing a discussion group together and bouncing all the learning curves around.

I remember when I was taking my chartered exams and I knew Quantitative Techniques was not my fort, I hunkered down, learnt all the formulas, did loads of exercises on my own, then cemented my efforts by engaging my course mates in a discussion group. When the results came out, even I was surprised to have received a distinction for that course. Go figure. I probably wouldn’t have scored that high if not for the discussion groups.

That said, I am considering enrolling back in formal education in a year or two. I look forward to going to class, getting involved in adult education and maybe being the oldest Mama among the students, but that’s totally cool by me.

I am sure that it would be interesting because I will make it so.

The Daily Post Learning Style.

What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in a group and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do you retain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simply by reading books?