How I Feel About Reading and Writing, #1

This blog entry is to be written in response to my reading of the first chapter in the book Patterns For a Purpose. To start off, I found that the information in the book was helpful. Perhaps the most impressive thing I learned from the book was the idea of "Evaluating Quality". As professor Burningham is aware, I have been reading a book published by Oxford University Press called Massacre at Mountain Meadows. The skills discussed in chapter one of our homework reading will enable me to look at the argument set forth in the book, and determine if it is valid. The book so far appears legitimate, and does not favor one group unfairly over the other.
Overall, chapter one encourages students to be active in their reading, and a key feature of this activity is writing. The book suggests keeping a "reading journal" as a tool onto which individuals may express, organize, and formulate their thoughts. This idea with reiterated in a reading at the end of the chapter by Mortimer Alden entitled "How to Mark a Book". In it, Alder also encourages "active" reading, and suggests that individuals who do not do so are involved in an effort that will ultimately be fruitless (pg. 24). The basic theme of chapter one was, according to my understanding, the concept that real reading is a time consuming, intellectual activity, but nonetheless worthwhile (pg. 26).