If you want a clue to a person’s educational achievements, don’t ask about degrees or where they went to college. Rather, ask, “What are you reading now?”
The answer will tell you whether the individual has curiosity and intellectual growth, and where those are occurring. Having no books on the list, for me, would be reason for concern. Where are their horizons and challenges? Or even their guilty pleasures?
I’ve met too many people having a slew of degrees who are still unimaginative hacks, whatever their field. And I’ve met people having nothing more than an elementary school education who are well read and have minds to match.
Reading, I’ll insist, is a discipline that needs to be engaged if one is to have credibility as a thinker. Any idiot can have opinions, but a reasoned analysis, well, that’s a much different matter.
By the way, just what are you reading these days?
Jnana's Red Barn 
Reading … Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives, by Lisa Guenther at Vanderbilt
Heh, you asked: “The Tao of Travel”, Theroux; “The Unsettling of America”, Berry; “I Hike”, Grinter and “The Resilient Farm and Homestead”, Falk. I keep several books going and ingest what my mind is ready for at a particular time. Someone just loaned me “Unspoken” as well.
The SUN, Bees & Bee Keeping, 1000 White Women, there is a whole stack next to my bed…
1000 White Woman is such a good book! I hope you enjoy it. I have a stack, too. I add to it before I can ever get to the end of it. I hope that’s always true.
Well at the moment, i’m not reading anything. Whoops. I guess i’m a bit obsessed with television shows. When I get back to school I shall be reading more though. I’ve read The Hobbit and I absolutely loved it! I have to read Shift by Hugh Howey, Lord of The Rings and also Inferno by Dan Brown. 🙂
Reblogged this on Thoughtful, insightful, interesting.