thinkfetti

So much of my reading is “constellation-ally” self-organizing: I have at any one time some well-defined themes of interest and some fuzzy themes just below my conscious awareness, and in my reading I pick up books in different disciplines without staying in any one discipline or genre.

The “sense” in my variety of reading selections comes - emerges - later. It’s an experience of definite, luminous (illuminating) connections arising between areas that seemed related before, where the relationships before were vague and incapable of generating new ideas.

Some of my reading now is in areas of leadership, problem-solving, intelligence vs. mindfulness, and fertile connections between Eastern and Western thought. I was reading in several of these areas in 2000 when I first started exploring ways to model creativity, and I have experienced a lot to enrich my thinking in this constellation of ideas and themes since then, particularly through failures and successes in teaching and leading.

It looks as though I may have some opportunities to reflect on these connections in the coming months, especially in the context of a new problem-solving course I’ll be developing (more on that later). One thing that I anticipate and hope will allow time and some mental headroom for this reflection is the end of the semester next week!

I have a lot of books going. (You can see just how many - and which ones - by looking at my “my reading list” page) Part of the reason for this is that I buy books for various reasons: when I need them, when I’ve seen them at someone else’s house and picked them up for a minute or an hour and decided I need them, when I know I’m supposed to be professionally interested in them and would feel too guilty if I didn’t buy them, when the cover or the topic or a randomly-selected page convinces me I would be happier with the book than without.

That’s the input side.

The processing side (oh, let’s just call it reading) is frequently hamstrung by my general lack of available time, or, more accurately, by the fact that I spend most of my available time working on other big and little projects. So I don’t finish books in one sit-down-block-of-time. This is another part of the reason for so many books-in-progress.

A third reason is that I have as many intellectual moods as I do emotional moods (if not more), so I feel most comfortable when I have just the right book around for my current intellectual mood.

So it’s quite a stack. This way of threaded reading isn’t particularly efficient, but I am pleased to know that efficiency isn’t as high on my list as suggestive, cross-fertilizing prose and poetry.