I HAVE to put a picture in this one, so at some point, that will happen 😁
I have a month in between when I graduated and when I start work at Goldman Sachs. While visiting family, packing up our apartment, and hopefully surviving on any money we have saved up 😬, I have sort of reveled in the fact that no one will ever force me to read anything simply because a professor thinks that I need to read it for class. I will largely get to pick and choose what I want to read for myself! Of course, as I'm writing this, I'm sure I will end up reading manuals, reports, and other things for my job that will probably be long, dull, and that I will read "because someone said so." At least I'll get paid for it?
With that in mind, however, I've also realized that if I want to learn things about the world, I'll have to motivate myself to read about them. Reading the news? Like I said before, not a problem. If I want to know about anything that isn't mainstream, however, or even inform myself about a topic beyond 500 words, that will require me to go out and look for it.
With that in mind, I've headed to several bookstores over the last week or so, and as much fun as it would be to just pick up some fantasy books and blast through those in a day or two, I know I need to read things that will be good for me to read. And that is something I have learned from my mother. Somehow, she is a wizard about finding books that are both educational and give you a different perspective, while at the same time being really good reads.
No book epitomizes this more to me than Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (side note: according to Chicago Manual of Style, you should always italicize book titles, while article titles, and book titles are in quotation marks). My mom recommended this book to me years ago, and I picked it up and devoured it. It's all historically accurate, and follows the stories of the 1893 Chicago World Fair and a serial killer named H. H. Holmes. He used the fair to lure several dozen people to his apartment building, where he murdered them.
This book was really interesting, but I also learned a lot about the time period, learned about a historical event that shaped a lot of American culture that we take for granted today, and also about a serial killer who was quite famous in his own time. While it sounds like trivial information, I've actually been able to understand cultural references to the World's Fair on several occasions because I read that book. For all you BBC Sherlock lover's out there, the second episode of the fourth season references H. H. Holmes's hotel several times!
The point of all this is that I have learned from my mother to not just read the fun stuff (which I still do, quite frequently), but also to try to expand my horizons through my reading. This past week I bought three books: One is a fantasy book that I'll, again, blow through in a day or two, but the other two are longer books on subjects I totally know nothing about. I figure, however, that it's probably a good idea to understand Cuba's economy, and I've got the time, so why not read about it? And I attribute that desire to expand my horizons through reading to mama. Thanks for always being such a good example of this and recommending books that I might not necessarily love to read, but that will definitely be good for me!
Happy Mama's Day!
I have a month in between when I graduated and when I start work at Goldman Sachs. While visiting family, packing up our apartment, and hopefully surviving on any money we have saved up 😬, I have sort of reveled in the fact that no one will ever force me to read anything simply because a professor thinks that I need to read it for class. I will largely get to pick and choose what I want to read for myself! Of course, as I'm writing this, I'm sure I will end up reading manuals, reports, and other things for my job that will probably be long, dull, and that I will read "because someone said so." At least I'll get paid for it?
With that in mind, however, I've also realized that if I want to learn things about the world, I'll have to motivate myself to read about them. Reading the news? Like I said before, not a problem. If I want to know about anything that isn't mainstream, however, or even inform myself about a topic beyond 500 words, that will require me to go out and look for it.
With that in mind, I've headed to several bookstores over the last week or so, and as much fun as it would be to just pick up some fantasy books and blast through those in a day or two, I know I need to read things that will be good for me to read. And that is something I have learned from my mother. Somehow, she is a wizard about finding books that are both educational and give you a different perspective, while at the same time being really good reads.
This book was really interesting, but I also learned a lot about the time period, learned about a historical event that shaped a lot of American culture that we take for granted today, and also about a serial killer who was quite famous in his own time. While it sounds like trivial information, I've actually been able to understand cultural references to the World's Fair on several occasions because I read that book. For all you BBC Sherlock lover's out there, the second episode of the fourth season references H. H. Holmes's hotel several times!
The point of all this is that I have learned from my mother to not just read the fun stuff (which I still do, quite frequently), but also to try to expand my horizons through my reading. This past week I bought three books: One is a fantasy book that I'll, again, blow through in a day or two, but the other two are longer books on subjects I totally know nothing about. I figure, however, that it's probably a good idea to understand Cuba's economy, and I've got the time, so why not read about it? And I attribute that desire to expand my horizons through reading to mama. Thanks for always being such a good example of this and recommending books that I might not necessarily love to read, but that will definitely be good for me!
Happy Mama's Day!
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