"This approach to reading is liberating. It freed me from the bondage of having to read cover to cover. I am going to teach this concept to all of my students and promote it when I speak at homeschool conferences."
Joe Wirtz, Founder of The Cultural Commission and The Worldview Book Store.
I spoke with Joe two days ago. He read the Reading On The Run series on the Dawn Treader and then ordered by the same name. To say Joe was fired up about the concept of the Reading Continuum would be a gross understatement.
That is what happens to people who are heavy readers when they discover that they can read a book guilt free now. That is, they don't have to read every word on every page from cover to cover in order to "read a book." They get excited.
Joe told me that he now tells his students that he can read three 250 page books in one day. He laughed as he told me how their eyes widen in disbelief as he makes that claim. Which is a true claim, btw. I can read 3 or 4 books of that size in a day too. The secret, of course, is ransack reading.
By the way, I owe a thank you to Joe Carter for linking to my reading series on Evangelical Outpost the day before yesterday. EO readers have been dropping by to check it out. I know some of them will experience the same liberation as Joe Wirtz and myself have experienced.
Not too long ago, Carter wrote
I soon realized, however, that “free books” weren't exactly free at all and that I would be paying for them with the only currency that ever really matters: Time.
Soon I became much more discerning about the books I agreed to review when I realized that the publishers or authors actually expected you to review them. If you haven't written a book review since 12th grade English class, you probably forget just how difficult it can be. Add to that the guilt that piles up alongside the 27 review copies stacked in the corner and you realize that buying your own books isn's so bad after all.
[Note to authors: I may be slow, but I'm also honest. I took each book with the agreement to read and review it and I vow to do just that. Starting next week I plan to start cranking out reviews that are long, long overdue.]
Perhaps Joe is already putting into practice the Reading Continuum concepts and knocking out that backlog of reading that has stacked up in his corner. You can too. Come and experience those famous words of William Wallace ... FREEDOM!
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