In defense of the slow, inefficient read … and the long point pencil
Efficiency and speed are quite different where reading is concerned. Each has an important role to play in making sense of what I read. I need to read a book twice to get to both headspaces. And that involves revisiting passages over and again, each time with new tools added.
Generally, my reading goals are to 1.) understand an author’s argument the way they intend to present it; and then to 2.) throw the argument up against other authors’ ideas to test the extent to which their ideas explain the evidence.
This is the story of the reading tools that helped me read last week.
The first read sketches the bones. I’m on the hunt for the major concepts, big question and the author’s answer to that question. A quick pass-through with only a pencil.
A pencil that keeps a point across multiple pages of margin notes keeps my reading momentum up. And momentum keeps me focused on just the big idea(s). All the examples, citations, and clever wordplay are the proverbial weeds. I jump over those weeds while I skim.
And this 9852 pencil keeps up. Highly recommend. Five stars. BFFs.
Simple lines and circled words are the game. And a running outline of the major points on the front page.
I also dog-ear the top corners of pages that seem particularly important to the author’s argument. Folded pages serve as landmarks for my forthcoming close read.
The second read interrogates the body entire. A slow, close read of the author’s supporting evidence and reasoning. I evaluate the extent to which the author’s examples actually show what they think those examples show. And I compare and contrast the author’s explanations to other scholars’ ideas. A fly on the broader scholarly web.
Two colors of highlighter are my friends while reading closely. I separate passages that are important to the author (in grey) from passages I find personally powerful for my own work (in an accent color).
I travel from dog-eared page to dog-eared page, summarizing and reflecting and referencing other readings in pencil within the margins. Book darts render the most important of these passages easy to flip to for future me.
Dog-eared, darted and well-read.
A flexible analog reading ecosystem that serves me well.
This week’s Inked Tines update includes last week’s currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. I’m unable to settle on one single standout combo this week. A function of this currently inked sextet working so well as a collective.
Franklin-Christoph 03 Ghost (EF) — Empty. A beautiful combination of playful grey ink and trustworthy EF lines. Excellent daily driving and reading notetaking. Task management, reading notes, commonplace notes.
KACO Green Edge (F) — Feed. A rockstar, glamor-forward pairing. The party-rocking All the Best performed reliably to the last. Accent reflections in my commonplace, journal entries, and manuscript revisions.
Sailor Pro Gear Graphite Lighthouse (Z Architect) — Feed. A go-to combo for longform writing. The Pro Gear’s section is comfortable over long writing sessions. The Architect grind encouraged fun line variation that kept me interested. Journaling, reading notes, one letter, and a new poem.
TWSBI 580-AL Smoke RoseGold II (F) — Feed. Dark brown hues dominate this pair’s writing. Rikyu-cha’s lovely green undertones take a firm backseat. Consistently wet lines lent smoothness to slow, thoughtful writing sessions in my journal, a few sentences in my commonplace notebook and reading notes.
Montblanc 146 Le Petit Prince & Fox (EF) — 3/5. This pair was generally neglected this past week. The narrow nib suits detail-oriented writing tasks. The squared EF nib works best when I write slowly, concentrating on my writing angle. More of those kinds of writing when school resumes next week.
Nahvalur Nautilus Caldera Sea (BBG) — 1/3. A large, comfortable pen through writing sessions that span multiple pages. Journaling, commonplace reflections, and manuscript drafting.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Odyssey Neptune 400 (A5). Ha. Haha ha. Not one new word. I’m proud of how well I insulated my break time this spring.
Journals. Plural. A week that includes two journals is a great week.
Endless Recorder in Mountain Snow (A5). I added one final entry to my first journal of 2023. A three-page long rambling reflection on what resonated with me about my Monday. I used the KACO Edge and its Faber-Castell F nib. Red ink with gold and purple accents abound.
A beglittered reflection
The notebook ends, as my journals do, with a final review and reflection on my entires and an index of the poems and/or excerpts I’ve appended to my journaling.
I learn powerful lessons about myself during these end-of-journal reviews. John Dewey — one of the preeminent thinkers about learning and schools in the modern era — argued that we don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on our experience.
Creating an index of the poems, lyrics, and excerpts that spoke to me across the previous few months are windows into the up’s and downs of my mental state. Dark poems resonate during hard times — as do hopefully poems during good times. The index also renders my journal more easily referenceable.
Doubly useful in lovely Rikyu-cha.
Midori MD B6 Slim. One journal fills. Another takes its place. The circle of life cycles onward. Five pages onward.
I wrote another three entries in the Midori over the course of the week. First is a targeted reflection, made in list form. The TWSBI’s disciplined F lines allowed me to fit detailed information into few lines. A requirement for orderly list-making.
The week’s final two journal entries are both longform reflections. My newest pen, the Mr. Cypress Cone Micarta presented below, drove Thursday morning’s journaling. One page is a running think-piece recording my initial thoughts on the pen itself. The second page expands into thoughts on my week to that point. Positively exploratory.
I tagged the Nautilus’s BBG nib for my final entry — which I composed at a local coffee shop on Friday evening. A third rambling exploration of Friday morning’s events and thoughts on the book I had just finished: Naím’s The Revenge of Power. All in Warped Passages’ calming denim blue.
Oh, and then some playing around when my friend met me at the coffee shop
Commonplace. Elemental Paper Iodine (A5). A third notebook saw pen and ink this week. Two new pages on the three big concepts in Moisés Naím’s newest book.
The new Mr. Cypress pen recorded a summarize quote from Naím’s introduction. Taccia’s Usuzumi is a black ink with a dark copper sheen that lends a dark-grey feel to my writing. Playful without distraction.
I turned to the KACO Edge’s All the Best for loud colorful reflections on the definitions of populism, polarization and post-truth. Red ink seemed fitting given Naím’s critical lens.
Written dry. The Franklin-Christoph 03 ran empty while updating my Hobonichi on Wednesday afternoon. The custom EF nib is dear to me. The nib wears my blog logo. And the nib writes a lovely true-to-size EF line with pencil-like feedback.
A favorite these past two weeks.
The Franklin-Christoph’s exhaustion proved excellent timing as my new Mr. Cypress pen arrived that same afternoon. The stars had definitely aligned in my favor.
Newly inked. Destiny. The universe itself seemed keen on me inking my newly-arrived Mr. Cypress pen as my off-the-bench task manager and daily driver.
Welcome to the family, MN09-13.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. Two separate orders landed on my stoop this week. A new pen from a new-to-me maker (Mr. Cypress) and a mix of items from Yoseka Stationery.
Mr. Cypress’ Cone Micarta (MN09-13). The most specific of pen names.
The horizontally stacked micarta construction calls to mind the stacked celluloids of old that I find appealing. Vintage Parker Vacumatics and Visconti Wall Streets, in particular. Orderly rows of color with variable blocks of intensity. Beauty and order, all together.
Swoon.
The proprietary nib and feed limit me to using this particular nib. That said, the disciplined F line makes way to a generous EF when reverse writing. And excellent multitasker nib suited to both detailed notetaking in EF and long form writing in F.
My sister gifted me a Yoseka gift card back in 2022. I waited patiently for the two inks I wanted to be in stock at the same time. The inventory deities were kind and granted me both Sailor’s Harahara (a moody purple-pink) and Taccia’s Usuzumi (a black with delusions of grey) last week.
Harahara is a replacement for my soon-to-be-empty Yozakura
And two Frixion highlighters snuck into my cart. One grey and one blue. Erasable highlighting is a novel concept for me. I shall play a bit on various papers while teaching this coming week.
Outgoing / trades or sales. I sold two pens last week. Both my Classic Blue Kaweco Sport (with a M nib) and the Franklin-Christoph 31 (with an EF nib) are off to their new desks.
It’s comforting to know that both will now get loving attention.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. The early skirmishes of the Last Battle seems to have begun in Jordan’s Towers of Midnight. I read 161 iPhone-sized pages of Jordan’s fantasy epic last week. I moved from Chapter 22 to the middle of Chapter 29. Not too shabby. All read in my phone’s Books app.
One of the main characters, Rand al’Thor, discovered the importance of allowing himself to feel and care about the people around him. Good leadership, he remarked, is about owning one’s emotions, not pushing them away.
I highlighted a passage from his realization, “By allowing myself to care again, to laugh again, I’ve had to open myself to my failures, too.” This passage spoke to me during a week when I reflected back on my own journaling.
Nonfiction. I started and finished my close read of Moisés Naím’s The Revenge of Power last week. A 290 page essay on the mechanisms by which modern autocracies are being attempted — or, in some cases, have already been formed. He draws lines across many of the texts I read on the subject in 2022.
The usual suspects took the journey with me. A trusty — if shorter, now — Mitsubishi 9852 pencil and a duo of Mildliners. Both the grey and blue highlighters are drying out. Evidence of attentive use.
The frayed felt tips of follow-through.
Music. I stumbled onto the cozy nordic YouTube channel last week. YouTube’s algorithm suggested two videos from the young channel to me. It appears to be only two weeks old. A lo-fi infant.
cozy Nordic’s videos comprise original lo-fi soundtracks presented alongside original animations — a formula I’ve come to appreciate while I read, and write, and even while cleaning the house. All-purpose chill.
I recommend their newest video to start. A video called “a snowy day in bergen.” Unassuming midi-driven lo-fi. Rainy, tea-inspired video aesthetics. Memories of my vacation to Reykjavik. All good things.
And even the comments are safe for work. I dig a positive community.
