Twelve years of grade
school, a BA in English, an MFA in Poetry, and three years of teaching college
composition soured me on institutional learning, so I've compiled this catalog
of enlightening, amusing, and beautiful books to serve as a 21st century
syllabus for homeschoolers and self-educators.
I am a jug filled with
water both magic and plain; I have only to lean over and a stream of beautiful
thoughts flows out of me. My education has been so unwitting I can't quite
tell which of my thoughts come from me and which from my books.... Because
when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth
and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought
dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through
the veins to the root of each blood vessel.
Bohumil Hrabal,
Too Loud a Solitude
How many a man has dated
a new era in his life
from the reading of a book. Thoreau,
Walden
I hope your visit
here launches a new era for you. |