essay after reading a book

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How to Write a Journal Response to a Book

Last Updated: June 27, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Michelle Golden, PhD . Michelle Golden is an English teacher in Athens, Georgia. She received her MA in Language Arts Teacher Education in 2008 and received her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2015. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 398,049 times.

Journaling is a great way to process what you've read and develop your understanding of the text. Many teachers give response journal assignments to help students clarify what's read, solidify their reactions to and opinions on the text, and organize their thoughts before working on a larger assignment. As such, to write a journal response to a book, you'll need to engage with the text as you read it and write out your thoughts on that text in a cohesive, thorough manner. By practicing careful reading and writing habits, you will be able to write a thoughtful response that can help launch a term paper or extended essay on a given reading. You can write journal entries as you are reading books or after you finish them. They can be about any topic related to the book. Maybe the book made you wonder something, or you made a connection to something in your life or to another book, or whatever.

Sample Responses

Writing a Journal Response to a Book

• Address what the main thesis is for the reading. What is the reading about, and why did the author write the text?
• Acknowledge any conclusions or commentary/arguments the author arrives at. If the book is about something, like the social and political happenings of the author's time, what does the author ultimately think and how do you know this?
• Incorporate one or two important quotes that are representative of the rest of the text.

• Don't be afraid to make connections between the book and your own life; if there is a theme or character that speaks to you, write about why.
• Address and evaluate the author's arguments and conclusions, which should have been detailed in the summary part of your journal.
• Think of the commentary as either supporting or rejecting (what you consider) the author's main points.
• Justify your opinions in the commentary. Agreeing or disagreeing is only the first step; for a thorough response, you'll need to analyze your own opinions and arrive at a reason why you had that reaction.

• Allow yourself to explore a topic covered in the summary. Think about why you believe the author addressed certain subjects, as well as what you think about those subjects and the author's depiction.
• Analyze your opinions. Don't just write that you liked or disliked something, or that you agreed or disagreed with it - dig deeper and figure out why.
• Ask yourself: How far can I run with a given idea, and how can I make sense of it? Think of your journal as a place to make sense of both the academic and personal experience of reading a given book. [4] X Research source
• As your journal progresses over the course of the semester or school year, your responses should become longer and more complex.
• You should be able to chart the development of your thoughts within each individual response and across the journal as a whole.

• Consider using clear and descriptive headings in your journal. It will help you more easily find your thoughts and insights as you read through your journal at a later date.
• It's okay if the actual journal entries wander a bit while exploring the subject - in fact, this can be very helpful. [5] X Research source The goal is to organize your journal as a whole so that you can make sense of your entries and track your progress.

Engaging with the Text

• Try to get a general understanding of what the text is about before you read it. You can do this by reading a summary, skimming the chapter(s), or browsing a reader's companion to a given text.
• Contextualize the text in terms of its historical, biographical, and cultural significance.
• Ask questions about the text. Don't just passively read the book; analyze what's being said and have an "argument" in your notes when you disagree with the author.
• Be aware of your personal response to the text. What shaped your beliefs on that subject, and how might your beliefs be similar to or different from the author's (or a reader of his or her time)?
• Identify the main thesis of the text and try to trace how it develops over the course of the book.

• Annotations don't have to be eloquent. They can be half-formed thoughts and impressions, or even exclamations.
• Some critical readers annotate a text to clarify things that were vague in the text. Other readers annotate to assess and evaluate the author's arguments.
• Try to make your annotations as diverse as possible so that your notes approach the subject matter from multiple angles.

• Try to read through your annotations within a day of writing them, and then several times over the following weeks.

• Highlight or draw a star next to the 10 or so notes, comments, or passages that you identify as being somewhat significant.
• Underline or put a second star next to the five notes/comments/passages that you think are most significant. They can be significant to the plot, to your understanding of the plot, or to the argument you hope to support in your response.

Gathering Your Thoughts for the Journal

• Story webs are typically organized by a central topic or question in the middle, surrounded by boxes or bubbles that link to that topic and support, deny, or comment on that topic or question.
• Story maps can be more like a flow chart. They track the major plot points and break down the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the book in a visual format.

• Try not to copy your freewriting word for word into your journal. Instead, pull out a few key thoughts and phrases, then try to expand on them to develop your ideas for the journal entry.

• Freewriting can be helpful to work out your summary of the reading, where prewriting may be useful for working out your commentary on the text.
• Try not to restrict or limit yourself while prewriting. Let yourself explore the thoughts and opinions you had as you read the text and trace those thoughts to their logical conclusions.

Expert Q&A

• Work in a quiet environment free of electronic distractions. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Use sticky notes and/or highlighters to mark important passages. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Don’t read large chunks and expect to fully understand the text when you write about it. Instead, read a small section (one short chapter or half of a long chapter) and then write. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

Things You'll Need

• Computer or pen and journal
• Highlighters (optional)
• Sticky notes (optional)

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/how-to-write-a-book-summary/
• ↑ https://research.uoregon.edu/plan/undergraduate-research/resources/exploring-topic
• ↑ http://wac.colostate.edu/books/language_connections/chapter2.pdf
• ↑ http://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/sampleresponsepapers.htm
• ↑ http://www.salisbury.edu/counseling/new/7_critical_reading_strategies.html
• ↑ http://writing.colostate.edu/textbooks/informedwriter/chapter2.pdf
• ↑ http://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-journals-efficient-teacher-responses

About This Article

To write a journal response to a book, start by writing a summary of the book to explain the author’s main points, and provide 1 to 2 quotes from the text to support your analysis. Then, give your commentary on the book, explaining why you agree or disagree with what the author says. As part of your response, give reasons for your thoughts and opinions, and try to answer questions like “Are there connections between the book and my life?” so you can dive more deeply into your personal experience of reading the book. For tips from our English co-author about how to annotate the book to engage more fully with the text, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Lifestyle & Interests — Reading Books

Essay Examples on Reading Books

What makes a good reading books essay topics.

When it comes to writing an essay about reading books, choosing the right topic is essential. A good essay topic is one that is interesting, relevant, and allows for in-depth analysis and discussion. To brainstorm and choose a good essay topic, start by considering your own interests and passions. What books have you read recently that have made a lasting impression on you? What themes or ideas from those books could be explored further in an essay? Additionally, consider the potential impact of the topic on the reader. A good essay topic is one that will engage and captivate the reader, sparking their interest in the subject matter. Finally, a good essay topic is one that allows for a variety of perspectives and interpretations, encouraging critical thinking and analysis.

Best Reading Books Essay Topics

• The role of symbolism in "To Kill a Mockingbird"
• The impact of censorship in "Fahrenheit 451"
• The portrayal of mental illness in "The Bell Jar"
• The theme of identity in "Beloved"
• The use of magical realism in "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
• The representation of race and gender in "The Color Purple"
• The significance of the green light in "The Great Gatsby"
• The portrayal of war in "All Quiet on the Western Front"
• The theme of power and corruption in "Animal Farm"
• The use of allegory in "Lord of the Flies"
• The impact of colonialism in "Things Fall Apart"
• The role of family in "Pride and Prejudice"
• The portrayal of love and loss in "The Fault in Our Stars"
• The theme of survival in "Life of Pi"
• The representation of heroism in "The Odyssey"
• The impact of technology in "Brave New World"
• The portrayal of social class in "The House of Mirth"
• The role of nature in "Walden"
• The theme of innocence in "The Catcher in the Rye"
• The significance of memory in "The Remains of the Day"

Reading Books essay topics Prompts

• Imagine you are a character from your favorite book. Write a letter to the author expressing your thoughts and feelings about the story and its impact on your life.
• Choose a book that you believe should be included in the school curriculum. Write an essay arguing for its inclusion, providing evidence to support your argument.
• Create a playlist of songs that you believe represents the themes and emotions of a particular book. Write an essay explaining your song choices and how they relate to the story.
• Choose a classic novel and write an essay exploring how its themes and messages are still relevant in today's society.
• Imagine you are a literary critic. Write a review of a book you recently read, discussing its strengths and weaknesses and whether you would recommend it to others.

Narrative About Reading

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The Effects of Reading a Book

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Friday essay: Alice Pung — how reading changed my life

Author (non-fiction, fiction, young adult), The University of Melbourne

Disclosure statement

Alice Pung does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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Having survived starvation and been spared execution, my father arrived in this new country, vassal-eyed and sunken-cheeked. I was born less than a month later and he named me Alice because he thought Australia was a Wonderland. Maybe he had vague literary aspirations for me, like most parents have vague infinite dreams for their babies, so small, so bewildered, so egoless. I arrived safe after so many babies had died under the regime created by a man who named himself deliberately after ruthless ambition — Political Potential, or Pol Pot for short.

“There was a tree,” my father told me when I was a teenager, “and this tree was where Pol Pot’s army, the Khmer Rouge, killed babies and toddlers. They would grab the infant by their ankles and swing them against the trunk and smash them again and again until they were dead.”

When I was an adult, I found out that there was not just the one tree. There were many such trees from which no cradle hung.

But as a child, growing up in Australia, the oldest of four, I knew the words to comfort crying babies. They’d been taught to me by my schoolteachers, with rhyme but without reason: when the bough breaks the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all. A gentle song to rock my sisters to sleep. If my mother understood the words I was singing, she’d yell at me.

My mother was always hollering at me about one thing or another. After the age of eight, I was never left in peace. She repeatedly told me that babies had really soft skulls, that there was even a hole in their heads that hadn’t yet closed. When I looked at my baby sister, I could see something pulsing on the top of her scalp, beneath the skin. Never drop a baby, they warned me, or your life will be over. They spoke in warnings and commands, like Old Testament sages. They’d seen babies dropped dead. Their language was literal, not literary, but it did the trick.

We could not complain that we were dying of boredom because they’d seen death close-up, and it was definitely not caused by a lack of Lego. We could not say that we were starving because at one malarial point in his life, my father thought that if he breathed inwards he could feel his backbone through his stomach. We could never be hungry or bored in our concrete house in Braybrook, behind a carpet factory that spewed out noxious methane smells that sent us to school reeking like whoopee-cushions.

But in this scatological suburb, I was indeed often bored shitless. Imagine this — you go outside and hoons in cobbled-together Holdens wind down their windows and tell you to Go Back Home, Chinks. So you walk home and inside, it’s supposed to be like home. But it’s not a home you know.

It’s a home your parents know, where the older siblings look after the younger ones and your mum works in an airless dark shed at the back making jewellery, and you think it’s called outworking because although she’s at home she’s always out working. Just like her mum in Phnom Penh and her mum’s mum in Phnom Penh and every other poor mum in the history of your family lineage.

“What are you doing here? Stop bothering me,” your mum would tell you. Or when she was desperate, she’d be cajoling: “Take your siblings out. Go for a walk. If you give me just one more hour, I’ll be done.” Her face would be blackened, her fingers cut. She’d have her helmet on, with the visor. She looked like a coal miner.

Back in Cambodia, the eldest siblings looked after the bevy of little ones, all the children roaming around the Central Market, en masse. Here, in these Melbourne suburbs they’d call it a marauding Asian gang, I bet. I preferred to stay at home. I had plenty to keep me occupied there. Our school library let me borrow books, but I can’t even remember the names of the librarians now. They didn’t like some of the kids because sometimes we stole books.

My best friend Lydia read a book about Helen Keller that so moved her, so expanded her 10-year-old sense of the world that she nicked it and stroked the one-line sample of Braille print on the last page until all the raised dots were flat. I nicked books too, books on needlecraft and making soft toys. Sometimes one of my aunts would come by and give us a garbage bag filled with fleecy fabric offcuts from her job sewing tracksuits in her own back shed.

Being a practical kid who bugged her parents at every opportunity possible for new toys, I wanted to have reference manuals on how to make them. I didn’t nick story books or novels because to me, those were like films I often only wanted to experience once.

One day, my baby sister rolled herself off the bed when I was supposed to be watching her. She was three months old. I had just turned nine. My mother ran into the house and railed at me like a dybbuk, “You’re dead! You’re dead!” She scooped my sister out of my hands. “What were you doing? You were meant to watch her!”

“She was asleep,” I sobbed, “I was reading a book.”

While my mother was working to support us in the dark back shed, I had been in the sunlit bedroom, staring for hours and hours on end at little rectangles, only stopping occasionally to make myself some Nescafé coffee with sweetened condensed milk. If this wasn’t the high life, then what was? Those books were not making me any smarter, she might have thought. Or even said, because it was something she was always telling me, because she couldn’t read or write herself. The government had closed down her Chinese school when she was in grade one, as the very first step of ethnic cleansing in Cambodia.

My mother called up my father and roared over the phone for him to come home immediately because I’d let my sister roll off the bed and she might be brain-damaged. “If she’s brain-damaged, you’re going to be dead,” my father said to me, before they both left for the hospital with my sister.

I hated my parents at that moment, but I hated myself more. I also hated the Baby-Sitters Club, all of those 12-year-old girls for whom looking after small children was just an endless series of sleepovers and car-washes and ice-cream parties and they even always got praised and paid for it. The only people I did not hate were my siblings. They were blameless.

This fucking reading , I thought, because this is how I thought back then, punctuated by profanity, because this is how I wrote back then in diaries I made at school of folded paper stapled together with colourful cardboard covers that I’d then take home and fill in with pages and pages of familial injustice. Sometimes the pen dug in so aggressively underlining a word of rage that I’d make a cut through the paper five pages deep. And this is how the kids talked at school, and also some of their parents who picked them up from school. But then I also realised, reading’s the only fucking good thing I have going for me .

It showed me parents who were not only reasonable, but indulgent. They were meant to be friends with their kids. They were meant to foster their creativity and enterprise. They hosted parties and baked cupcakes and laughed when their children messed up the house, and sat them down and explained things to them carefully with great verbal displays of affection. But only if the kids were like Kristy or Stacey or Dawn in the Baby-Sitters Club.

Read more: Friday essay: need a sitter? Revisiting girlhood, feminism and diversity in The Baby-Sitters Club

If they were anything like me, then they didn’t talk very much. We were refugees in school textbooks, there for edification, to induce guilt and gratitude. The presence of third-world people like us in a book immediately stripped that book of any reading-for-pleasure aspirations. We were hard work. We were Objects not Subjects. Or if subjects, subjects of charity and not agents of charity. Always takers, never givers. No wonder people resented us.

Hell, even I resented us! “Girls are more responsible,” my mother always told me. When my aunties dumped their children, my little cousins, with me, they’d always say, “Alice is so good. We trust her.” What’s one or two or three more when you already have so many in the house? they reasoned.

I imagined if some prying interloper had called the cops on my parents when I was young, seeing our makeshift crèche with no adult supervision around. “If you tell the government what I do,” my mother always warned me when I was a child, “they’ll take me away and lock me up and your brother and sisters will be distributed to your aunts and uncles or be put in foster homes.”

What she did — her 14-hour days in the back shed, working with potassium cyanide and other noxious chemicals to produce the jewellery for stores that would then pay her only a couple of dollars per ring or pendant — she thought was a crime. She got paid cash in hand, so she never paid any taxes. She just didn’t understand that she wasn’t the criminal; she was the one being exploited.

My mother began work at 13 in a plastic-bag factory, after her school was closed down. When all the men were at war, the factories were filled with women and children. One afternoon, she told me, she accidentally sliced open a chunk of her leg with the plastic-bag-cutting machine. She had to stay home for the next two weeks. She spent those two weeks worrying whether she’d be replaced by another little girl. In her whole working life, spanning over half a century, my mother has never signed an employment contract because she can’t write or read.

“People can rip me off so easily,” she would often lament, “that’s why I have to have my wits about me at all times.” She’d always count out the exact change when she went grocery shopping even though it mortified me as a kid, and drove those behind her in line nuts. “If they overcharge me and you’re not here, how can I explain anything to them?” she’d ask, “I don’t speak English.”

She’d memorise landmarks when driving, because she couldn’t read street signs. During elections, she would put a “1” next to the candidate who looked the most attractive in their photo. And she’d ask me to read the label on her prescription medicines.

“Tell me carefully,” she’d instruct, “too much or too little and you could kill me.” The power over life and death, I thought, not really a responsibility I wanted at eight. But power over life and death is supposed to be what great works of art are about. Sometimes, there’s not a huge chasm between being literate and being literary. They are not opposite ends of a continuum.

Sure, I enjoyed the classics, especially that line in Great Expectations when Pip determines that he will return a gentleman and deliver “gallons of condescension”. But the depictions of working children, children treated as economic units of labour, as instruments for ulterior adult ends – this was nothing new to me.

Looking after children is hard work. No one cares when things go right, it is the natural course of the universe. But everyone swarms in when things go wrong. A whole swat team, sometimes consisting of your own extended family members, ready to whack at you like a revolting bug if harm should befall your minor charges. The sad reality is that when you slap a monetary value onto these services, people sit up.

They pay attention. They first splutter about how outrageous it is. Then slowly they accept it. You hope that one day no children will be left at home, minding other children while their parents work, because all working parents will be able to access good, affordable childcare.

Often when people rail, think of the children! they are not really thinking of the children. Otherwise, they would listen to the children, not condemn the parents for situations beyond their control — illiteracy, minimum wages, poverty.

Jeanette Winterson wrote about art’s ability to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. It involves just seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. To understand that an eight-year-old can and will take responsibility and care of themselves when left to their own devices requires imaginative empathy, not judgement.

Reading showed me what the world could be. My life told me what the world was. It was not Jane Eyre or Lizzie Bennet or even Nancy Drew that opened my life to the possibility of a better existence. It was Ann M. Martin and her Baby-Sitters Club. That children should get paid was a crazy idea, that they should get paid for babysitting even more audacious.

That a handful of pre-teen girls could start a small business from Claudia’s home — beautiful artistic Asian Claudia Kishi with her own fixed phone line — and that they could muster all the neighbourhood children under their care and largesse was revolutionary to me.

In my life, the miraculous does not involve magic. There is nothing that makes the state of childhood particularly magical. There is a lot that is frightening, brutal and cruel about every stage of life. After all, I know that a single tree can harbour a cradle or a grave. But to be able to do what my hardworking, wonderful mother never could — time-travel, mind-read, even never to mistake dish detergent for shampoo because the pictures of fruit on the bottle are similar — this is a gift I will never take for granted.

This is an extract from The Gifts of Reading: Essays on the Joys of Reading, Giving and Receiving Books curated by Jennie Orchard, with all royalties to be donated to Room to Read (RRP $32.99, Hachette Australia), available now.

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How to Write a Close Reading Essay

Last Updated: May 2, 2023 References

This article was co-authored by Bryce Warwick, JD . Bryce Warwick is currently the President of Warwick Strategies, an organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area offering premium, personalized private tutoring for the GMAT, LSAT and GRE. Bryce has a JD from the George Washington University Law School. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 8,851 times.

With a close-reading essay, you get to take a deep dive into a short passage from a larger text to study how the language, themes, and style create meaning. Writing one of these essays requires you to read the text slowly multiple times while paying attention to both what is being said and how the author is saying it. It’s a great way to hone your reading and analytical skills, and you’ll be surprised at how it can deepen your understanding of a particular book or text.

Reading and Analyzing the Passage

• Think of “close reading" as an opportunity to look underneath the surface. While you may understand a text’s main themes from a single read-through, any given text usually contains multiple complexities in language, character development, and hidden themes that only become clear through close observation.

Tip: Look up words that you aren’t familiar with. Sometimes you might figure out what something means by using context clues, but when in doubt, look it up.

• Alliteration
• Personification
• Onomatopoeia

• What themes are present in the text? Is the passage about, for example, love, or the triumph of good over evil, a character's coming-of-age, or a commentary on social issues?
• What imagery is being used? Which of the 5 senses does the passage involve?
• What is the author’s writing style? Is it descriptive, persuasive, or technical?
• What is the tone of the passage? What emotions do you feel as you read?
• What is the author trying to say? Are they successful?

Tip: Try reading the text out loud. Sometimes hearing the words rather than just seeing them can make a difference in how you understand the language.

• Word choice
• Punctuation

Drafting a Thesis and Outline

• Close-reading essays can get very detailed, and it often is helpful to come back to the “main thing.” This summary can help you focus your thesis in one direction so your essay doesn’t become too broad.

• For example, you could write something like, “The author uses repetition and word choice to create an emotional connection between the reader and the protagonist. This sample from the book exemplifies how the author uses vivid language and atypical syntax throughout the entire text to help put the reader inside of the protagonist’s mind.”

• For example, you may quote a sentence from the passage that uses atypical punctuation to emphasize how the author’s writing style creates a certain cadence.
• Or you may use the repetition of a color or word or theme to explain how the author continually reinforces the overall message.

• There are a lot of different ways to outline an essay. You could use a bullet-pointed list to organize the things you want to write about, or you could plan out, paragraph by paragraph, what you want to say.
• Many people cannot write fast because they do not spend enough time planning what they want to state.
• When you take a couple of extra minutes to plan an essay, it's a lot easier to write because you know how the points should flow together.
• It is also obvious to a reader whether you plan and write the essay or make it up as you write it.

Writing the Essay

• The last thing you want is to write an essay and later on realize that you were required to include an outside source or that your paper was 5 pages longer than it needed to be.

• Some people find it easier to write their introduction once the body of the essay is done.
• The introduction can be a good place to give historical, social, or geographical context.

• Make sure to reference why the proof you’re giving is relevant. It should directly tie back to the main theme of your essay.
• Evidence can be a direct quote from the passage, a summary of that information, or a reference from a secondary source.

• The conclusion isn’t the place to add in new evidence or arguments. Those should all be in the actual body of the essay.

• An impactful close-reading essay will weave together examples, interpretation, and commentary.

• Try reading your essay out loud. You may notice awkward phrases, incorrect grammar, or stilted language that you didn’t before.

Expert Q&A

• Sites like Typely, Grammarly, and ProofreadingTool offer free feedback and edits. Keep in mind that you’ll need to review proposed changes because they may not all be correct for your particular essay. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about completing school assignments, check out our in-depth interview with Bryce Warwick, JD .

• ↑ https://guides.lib.uoguelph.ca/c.php?g=130967&p=4938496
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-do-close-reading#
• ↑ https://blogs.umass.edu/honors291g-cdg/how-to-write-a-close-reading-essay/
• ↑ https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/introduction/
• ↑ https://www.scribbr.com/research-paper/paragraph-structure/
• ↑ https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/conclusion/
• ↑ https://www.scribbr.com/category/academic-essay/

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Essay on Books for Students and Children

500 Words Essay on Books

Books are referred to as a man’s best friend . They are very beneficial for mankind and have helped it evolve. There is a powerhouse of information and knowledge. Books offer us so many things without asking for anything in return. Books leave a deep impact on us and are responsible for uplifting our mood.

This is why we suggest children read books from an early age to gain knowledge. The best part about books is that there are various types of books. One can read any type to gain different types of knowledge. Reading must be done by people of all ages. It not only widens our thinking but also enhances our vocabulary.

Different Genres of Books

There are different genres of books available for book readers. Every day, thousands of books are released in the market ranging from travel books to fictional books. We can pick any book of our interest to expand our knowledge and enjoy the reading experience.

Firstly, we have travel books, which tell us about the experience of various travelers. They introduce us to different places in the world without moving from our place. It gives us traveling tips which we can use in the future. Then, we have history books which state historical events. They teach about the eras and how people lived in times gone by.

Furthermore, we have technology books that teach us about technological developments and different equipment. You can also read fashion and lifestyle books to get up to date with the latest trends in the fashion industry.

Most importantly, there are self-help books and motivational books . These books help in the personality development of an individual. They inspire us to do well in life and also bring a positive change in ourselves. Finally, we have fictional books. They are based on the writer’s imagination and help us in enhancing our imagination too. They are very entertaining and keep us intrigued until the very end.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of Reading Books

There are not one but various advantages of reading books. To begin with, it improves our knowledge on a variety of subjects. Moreover, it makes us wiser. When we learn different things, we learn to deal with them differently too. Similarly, books also keep us entertained. They kill our boredom and give us great company when we are alone.

Furthermore, books help us to recognize our areas of interest. They also determine our career choice to a great extent. Most importantly, books improve our vocabulary . We learn new words from it and that widens our vocabulary. In addition, books boost our creativity. They help us discover a completely new side.

In other words, books make us more fluent in languages. They enhance our writing skills too. Plus, we become more confident after the knowledge of books. They help us in debating, public speaking , quizzes and more.

In short, books give us a newer perspective and gives us a deeper understanding of things. It impacts our personality positively as well. Thus, we see how books provide us with so many benefits. We should encourage everyone to read more books and useless phones.

FAQs on Books

Q.1 State the different genres of books.

A.1 Books come in different genres. Some of them are travel books, history books, technology books, fashion and lifestyle books, self-help books, motivational books, and fictional books.

Q.2 Why are books important?

A.2 Books are of great importance to mankind. They enhance our knowledge and vocabulary. They keep us entertained and also widen our perspective. This, in turn, makes us more confident and wise.

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How Should One Read a Book?

Read as if one were writing it.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Young Girl Reading , c. 1868. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

At this late hour of the world’s history, books are to be found in almost every room of the house—in the nursery, in the drawing room, in the dining room, in the kitchen. But in some houses they have become such a company that they have to be accommodated with a room of their own—a reading room, a library, a study. Let us imagine that we are now in such a room; that it is a sunny room, with windows opening on a garden, so that we can hear the trees rustling, the gardener talking, the donkey braying, the old women gossiping at the pump—and all the ordinary processes of life pursuing the casual irregular way which they have pursued these many hundreds of years. As casually, as persistently, books have been coming together on the shelves. Novels, poems, histories, memoirs, dictionaries, maps, directories; black letter books and brand new books; books in French and Greek and Latin; of all shapes and sizes and values, bought for purposes of research, bought to amuse a railway journey, bought by miscellaneous beings, of one temperament and another, serious and frivolous, men of action and men of letters.

Now, one may well ask oneself, strolling into such a room as this, how am I to read these books? What is the right way to set about it? They are so many and so various. My appetite is so fitful and so capricious. What am I to do to get the utmost possible pleasure out of them? And is it pleasure, or profit, or what is it that I should seek? I will lay before you some of the thoughts that have come to me on such an occasion as this. But you will notice the note of interrogation at the end of my title. One may think about reading as much as one chooses, but no one is going to lay down laws about it. Here in this room, if nowhere else, we breathe the air of freedom. Here simple and learned, man and woman are alike. For though reading seems so simple—a mere matter of knowing the alphabet—it is indeed so difficult that it is doubtful whether anybody knows anything about it. Paris is the capital of France; King John signed the Magna Charta; those are facts; those can be taught; but how are we to teach people so to read “Paradise Lost” as to see that it is a great poem, or “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” so as to see that it is a good novel? How are we to learn the art of reading for ourselves? Without attempting to lay down laws upon a subject that has not been legalized, I will make a few suggestions, which may serve to show you how not to read, or to stimulate you to think out better methods of your own.

And directly we begin to ask how should one read a book we are faced by the fact that books differ; there are poems, novels, biographies on the book shelf there; each differs from the other as a tiger differs from a tortoise, a tortoise from an elephant. Our attitude must always be changing, it is clear. From different books we must ask different qualities. Simple as this sounds, people are always behaving as if all books were of the same species—as if there were only tortoises or nothing but tigers. It makes them furious to find a novelist bringing Queen Victoria to the throne six months before her time; they will praise a poet enthusiastically for teaching them that a violet has four petals and a daisy almost invariably ten. You will save a great deal of time and temper better kept for worthier objects if you will try to make out before you begin to read what qualities you expect of a novelist, what of a poet, what of a biographer. The tortoise is bald and shiny; the tiger has a thick coat of yellow fur. So books too differ: one has its fur, the other has its baldness.

To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power.

Yes; but for all that the problem is not so simple in a library as at the Zoölogical Gardens. Books have a great deal in common; they are always overflowing their boundaries; they are always breeding new species from unexpected matches among themselves. It is difficult to know how to approach them, to which species each belongs. But if we remember, as we turn to the bookcase, that each of these books was written by a pen which, consciously or unconsciously, tried to trace out a design, avoiding this, accepting that, adventuring the other; if we try to follow the writer in his experiment from the first word to the last, without imposing our design upon him, then we shall have a good chance of getting hold of the right end of the string.

To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal. Be his fellow worker, become his accomplice. Even, if you wish merely to read books, begin by writing them. For this certainly is true—one cannot write the most ordinary little story, attempt to describe the simplest event—meeting a beggar, shall we say, in the street, without coming up against difficulties that the greatest of novelists have had to face. In order that we may realize, however briefly and crudely, the main divisions into which novelists group themselves, let us imagine how differently Defoe, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy would describe the same incident—this meeting a beggar in the street. Defoe is a master of narrative. His prime effort will be to reduce the beggar’s story to perfect order and simplicity. This happened first, that next, the other thing third. He will put in nothing, however attractive, that will tire the reader unnecessarily, or divert his attention from what he wishes him to know. He will also make us believe, since he is a master, not of romance or of comedy, but of narrative, that everything that happened is true. He will be extremely precise therefore. This happened, as he tells us on the first pages of” Robinson Crusoe,” on the first of September. More subtly and artfully, he will hypnotize us into a state of belief by dropping out casually some little unnecessary fact—for instance, “my father called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout.” His father’s gout is not necessary to the story, but it is necessary to the truth of the story, for it is thus that anybody who is speaking the truth adds some small irrelevant detail without thinking. Further, he will choose a type of sentence which is flowing but not too full, exact but not epigrammatic. His aim will be to present the thing itself without distortion from his own angle of vision. He will meet the subject face to face, four-square, without turning aside for a moment to point out that this was tragic, or that beautiful; and his aim is perfectly achieved.

But let us not for a moment confuse it with Jane Austen’s aim. Had she met a beggar woman, no doubt she would have been interested in the beggar’s story. But she would have seen at once that for her purposes the whole incident must be transformed. Streets and the open air and adventures mean nothing to her, artistically. It is character that interests her. She would at once make the beggar into a comfortable elderly man of the upper middle classes, seated by his fireside at his ease. Then, instead of plunging into the story vigorously and veraciously, she will write a few paragraphs of accurate and artfully seasoned introduction, summing up the circumstances and sketching the character of the gentleman she wishes us to know. “Matrimony as the origin of change was always disagreeable” to Mr. Woodhouse, she says. Almost immediately, she thinks it well to let us see that her words are corroborated by Mr. Woodhouse himself. We hear him talking. “Poor Miss Taylor!—I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her.” And when Mr. Woodhouse has talked enough to reveal himself from the inside, she then thinks it time to let us see him through his daughter’s eyes. “You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her.” Thus she shows us Emma flattering him and humoring him. Finally then, we have Mr. Woodhouse’s character seen from three different points of view at once; as he sees himself; as his daughter sees him; and as he is seen by the marvellous eye of that invisible lady Jane Austen herself. All three meet in one, and thus we can pass round her characters free, apparently, from any guidance but our own.

Now let Thomas Hardy choose the same theme—a beggar met in the street—and at once two great changes will be visible. The street will be transformed into a vast and sombre heath; the man or woman will take on some of the size and indistinctness of a statue. Further, the relations of this human being will not be towards other people, but towards the heath, towards man as law-giver, towards those powers which are in control of man’s destiny. Once more our perspective will be completely changed. All the qualities which were admirable in “Robinson Crusoe,” admirable in “Emma,” will be neglected or absent. The direct literal statement of Defoe is gone. There is none of the clear, exact brilliance of Jane Austen. Indeed, if we come to Hardy from one of these great writers we shall exclaim at first that he is “melodramatic” or “unreal” compared with them. But we should bethink us that there are at least two sides to the human soul; the light side and the dark side. In company, the light side of the mind is exposed; in solitude, the dark. Both are equally real, equally important. But a novelist will always tend to expose one rather than the other; and Hardy, who is a novelist of the dark side, will contrive that no clear, steady light falls upon his people’s faces, that they are not closely observed in drawing rooms, that they come in contact with moors, sheep, the sky and the stars, and in their solitude are directly at the mercy of the gods. If Jane Austen’s characters are real in the drawing room, they would not exist at all upon the top of Stonehenge. Feeble and clumsy in drawing rooms, Hardy’s people are large-limbed and vigorous out of doors. To achieve his purpose Hardy is neither literal and four-square like Defoe, nor deft and pointed like Jane Austen. He is cumbrous, involved, metaphorical. Where Jane Austen describes manners, he describes nature. Where she is matter of fact, he is romantic and poetical. As both are great artists, each is careful to observe the laws of his own perspective, and will not be found confusing us (as so many lesser writers do) by introducing two different kinds of reality into the same book.

Yet it is very difficult not to wish them less scrupulous. Frequent are the complaints that Jane Austen is too prosaic, Thomas Hardy too melodramatic. And we have to remind ourselves that it is necessary to approach every writer differently in order to get from him all he can give us. We have to remember that it is one of the qualities of greatness that it brings heaven and earth and human nature into conformity with its own vision. It is by reason of this masterliness of theirs, this uncompromising idiosyncrasy, that great writers often require us to make heroic efforts in order to read them rightly. They bend us and break us. To go from Jane Austen to Hardy, from Peacock to Trollope, from Scott to Meredith, from Richardson to Kipling, is to be wrenched and distorted, thrown this way and then that. Besides, everyone is born with a natural bias of his own in one direction rather than in another. He instinctively accepts Hardy’s vision rather than Jane Austen’s, and, reading with the current and not against it, is carried on easily and swiftly by the impetus of his own bent to the heart of his author’s genius. But then Jane Austen is repulsive to him. He can scarcely stagger through the desert of her novels.

Sometimes this natural antagonism is too great to be overcome, but trial is always worth making. For these difficult and inaccessible books, with all their preliminary harshness, often yield the richest fruits in the end, and so curiously is the brain compounded that while tracts of literature repel at one season, they are appetizing and essential at another.

If, then, this is true—that books are of very different types, and that to read them rightly we have to bend our imaginations powerfully, first one way, then another—it is clear that reading is one of the most arduous and exhausting of occupations. Often the pages fly before us and we seem, so keen is our interest, to be living and not even holding the volume in our hands. But the more exciting the book, the more danger we run of over-reading. The symptoms are familiar. Suddenly the book becomes dull as ditchwater and heavy as lead. We yawn and stretch and cannot attend. The highest flights of Shakespeare and Milton become intolerable. And we say to ourselves—is Keats a fool or am I?—a painful question, a question, moreover, that need not be asked if we realized how great a part the art of not reading plays in the art of reading. To be able to read books without reading them, to skip and saunter, to suspend judgment, to lounge and loaf down the alleys and bye-streets of letters is the best way of rejuvenating one’s own creative power. All biographies and memoirs, all the hybrid books which are largely made up of facts, serve to restore to us the power of reading real books—that is to say, works of pure imagination. That they serve also to impart knowledge and to improve the mind is true and important, but if we are considering how to read books for pleasure, not how to provide an adequate pension for one’s widow, this other property of theirs is even more valuable and important. But here again one should know what one is after. One is after rest, and fun, and oddity, and some stimulus to one’s own jaded creative power. One has left one’s bare and angular tower and is strolling along the street looking in at the open windows. After solitude and concentration, the open air, the sight of other people absorbed in innumerable activities, comes upon us with an indescribable fascination.

The windows of the houses are open; the blinds are drawn up. One can see the whole household without their knowing that they are being seen. One can see them sitting round the dinner table, talking, reading, playing games. Sometimes they seem to be quarrelling—but what about? Or they are laughing—but what is the joke? Down in the basement the cook is reading a newspaper aloud, while the housemaid is making a piece of toast; in comes the kitchen maid and they all start talking at the same moment—but what are they saying? Upstairs a girl is dressing to go to a party. But where is she going? There is an old lady sitting at her bedroom window with some kind of wool work in her hand and a fine green parrot in a cage beside her. And what is she thinking? All this life has somehow come together; there is a reason for it; a coherency in it, could one but seize it. The biographer answers the innumerable questions which we ask as we stand outside on the pavement looking in at the open window. Indeed there is nothing more interesting than to pick one’s way about among these vast depositories of facts, to make up the lives of men and women, to create their complex minds and households from the extraordinary abundance and litter and confusion of matter which lies strewn about. A thimble, a skull, a pair of scissors, a sheaf of sonnets, are given us, and we have to create, to combine, to put these incongruous things together. There is, too, a quality in facts, an emotion which comes from knowing that men and women actually did and suffered these things, which only the greatest novelists can surpass. Captain Scott, starving and freezing to death in the snow, affects us as deeply as any made-up story of adventure by Conrad or Defoe; but it affects us differently. The biography differs from the novel. To ask a biographer to give us the same kind of pleasure that we get from a novelist is to misuse and misread him. Directly he says “John Jones was born at five-thirty in the morning of August 13, I 862,” he has committed himself, focussed his lens upon fact, and if he then begins to romance, the perspective becomes blurred, we grow suspicious, and our faith in his integrity as a writer is destroyed. In the same way fact destroys fiction. If Thackeray, for example, had quoted an actual newspaper account of the Battle of Waterloo in “Vanity Fair,” the whole fabric of his story would have been destroyed, as a stone destroys a bubble.

But it is undoubted that these hybrid books, these warehouses and depositories of facts, play a great part in resting the brain and restoring its zest of imagination. The work of building up a life for oneself from skulls, thimbles, scissors, and sonnets stimulates our interest in creation and rouses our wish to see the work beautifully and powerfully done by a Flaubert or a Tolstoi. Moreover, however interesting facts may be, they are an inferior form of fiction, and gradually we become impatient of their weakness and diffuseness, of their compromises and evasions, of the slovenly sentences which they make for themselves, and are eager to revive ourselves with the greater intensity and truth of fiction.

It is necessary to have in hand an immense reserve of imaginative energy in order to attack the steeps of poetry. Here are none of those gradual introductions, those resemblances to the familiar world of daily life with which the novelist entices us into his world of imagination. All is violent, opposite, unrelated. But various causes, such as bad books, the worry of carrying on life efficiently, the intermittent but powerful shocks dealt us by beauty, and the incalculable impulses of our own minds and bodies frequently put us into that state of mind in which poetry is a necessity. The sight of a crocus in a garden will suddenly bring to mind all the spring days that have ever been. One then desires the general, not the particular; the whole, not the detail; to turn uppermost the dark side of the mind; to be in contact with silence, solitude, and all men and women and not this particular Richard, or that particular Anne. Metaphors are then more expressive than plain statements.

Thus in order to read poetry rightly, one must be in a rash, an extreme, a generous state of mind in which many of the supports and comforts of literature are done without. Its power of make-believe, its representative power, is dispensed with in favor of its extremities and extravagances. The representation is often at a very far remove from the thing represented, so that we have to use all our energies of mind to grasp the relation between, for example, the song of a nightingale and the image and ideas which that song stirs in the mind. Thus reading poetry often seems a state of rhapsody in which rhyme and metre and sound stir the mind as wine and dance stir the body, and we read on, understanding with the senses, not with the intellect, in a state of intoxication. Yet all this intoxication and intensity of delight depend upon the exactitude and truth of the image, on its being the counterpart of the reality within. Remote and extravagant as some of Shakespeare’s images seem, far-fetched and ethereal as some of Keats’s, at the moment of reading they seem the cap and culmination of the thought; its final expression. But it is useless to labor the matter in cold blood. Anyone who has read a poem with pleasure will remember the sudden conviction, the sudden recollection (for it seems sometimes as if we were about to say, or had in some previous existence already said, what Shakespeare is actually now saying), which accompany the reading of poetry, and give it its exaltation and intensity. But such reading is attended, whether consciously or unconsciously, with the utmost stretch and vigilance of the faculties, of the reason no less than of the imagination. We are always verifying the poet’s statements, making a flying comparison, to the best of our powers, between the beauty he makes outside and the beauty we are aware of within. For the humblest among us is endowed with the power of comparison. The simplest (provided he loves reading) has that already within him to which he makes what is given him—by poet or novelist—correspond.

With that saying, of course, the cat is out of the bag. For this admission that we can compare, discriminate, brings us to this further point. Reading is not merely sympathizing and understanding; it is also criticizing and judging. Hitherto our endeavor has been to read books as a writer writes them. We have been trying to understand, to appreciate, to interpret, to sympathize. But now, when the book is finished, the reader must leave the dock and mount the bench. He must cease to be the friend; he must become the judge. And this is no mere figure of speech. The mind seems (“seems,” for all is obscure that takes place in the mind) to go through two processes in reading. One might be called the actual reading; the other the after reading. During the actual reading, when we hold the book in our hands, there are incessant distractions and interruptions. New impressions are always completing or cancelling the old. One’s judgment is suspended, for one does not know what is coming next. Surprise, admiration, boredom, interest, succeed each other in such quick succession that when, at last, the end is reached, one is for the most part in a state of complete bewilderment. Is it good? or bad? What kind of book is it? How good a book is it? The friction of reading and the emotion of reading beat up too much dust to let us find clear answers to these questions. If we are asked our opinion, we cannot give it. Parts of the book seem to have sunk away, others to be starting out in undue prominence. Then perhaps it is better to take up some different pursuit—to walk, to talk, to dig, to listen to music. The book upon which we have spent so much time and thought fades entirely out of sight. But suddenly, as one is picking a snail from a rose, tying a shoe, perhaps, doing something distant and different, the whole book floats to the top of the mind complete. Some process seems to have been finished without one’s being aware of it. The different details which have accumulated in reading assemble themselves in their proper places. The book takes on a definite shape; it becomes a castle, a cowshed, a gothic ruin, as the case may be. Now one can think of the book as a whole, and the book as a whole is different, and gives one a different emotion, from the book received currently in several different parts. Its symmetry and proportion, its confusion and distortion can cause great delight or great disgust apart from the pleasure given by each detail as it is separately realized. Holding this complete shape in mind it now becomes necessary to arrive at some opinion of the book’s merits, for though it is possible to receive the greatest pleasure and excitement from the first process, the actual reading, though this is of the utmost importance, it is not so profound or so lasting as the pleasure we get when the second process—the after reading—is finished, and we hold the book clear, secure, and (to the best of our powers) complete in our minds.

But how, we may ask, are we to decide any of these questions—is it good, or is it bad?—how good is it, how bad is it? Not much help can be looked for from outside. Critics abound; criticisms pullulate; but minds differ too much to admit of close correspondence in matters of detail, and nothing is more disastrous than to crush one’s own foot into another person’s shoe. When we want to decide a particular case, we can best help ourselves, not by reading criticism, but by realizing our own impression as acutely as possible and referring this to the judgments which we have gradually formulated in the past. There they hang in the wardrobe of our mind—the shapes of the books we have read, as we hung them up and put them away when we had done with them. If we have just read “Clarissa Harlowe,” for example, let us see how it shows up against the shape of “Anna Karenina.” At once the outlines of the two books are cut out against each other as a house with its chimneys bristling and its gables sloping is cut out against a harvest moon. At once Richardson’s qualities—his verbosity, his obliqueness—are contrasted with Tolstoi’s brevity and directness. And what is the reason of this difference in their approach? And how does our emotion at different crises of the two books compare? And what must we attribute to the eighteenth century, and what to Russia and the translator? But the questions which suggest themselves are innumerable. They ramify infinitely, and many of them are apparently irrelevant. Yet it is by asking them and pursuing the answers as far as we can go that we arrive at our standard of values, and decide in the end that the book we have just read is of this kind or of that, has merit in that degree or in this. And it is now, when we have kept closely to our own impression, formulated independently our own judgment, that we can most profitably help ourselves to the judgments of the great critics—Dryden, Johnson, and the rest. It is when we can best defend our own opinions that we get most from theirs.

So, then—to sum up the different points we have reached in this essay—have we found any answer to our question, how should we read a book? Clearly, no answer that will do for everyone; but perhaps a few suggestions. In the first place, a good reader will give the writer the benefit of every doubt; the help of all his imagination; will follow as closely, interpret as intelligently as he can. In the next place, he will judge with the utmost severity. Every book, he will remember, has the right to be judged by the best of its kind. He will be adventurous, broad in his choice, true to his own instincts, yet ready to consider those of other people. This is an outline which can be filled, in at taste and at leisure, but to read something after this fashion is to be a reader whom writers respect. It is by the means of such readers that masterpieces are helped into the world.

If the moralists ask us how we can justify our love of reading, we can make use of some such excuse as this. But if we are honest, we know that no such excuse is needed. It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure—mysterious, unknown, useless as it is—is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely fertilizing to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgment when secrets are revealed and the obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and made pavements and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing but this: we have loved reading.

Rachel Cusk

Renaissance women, fady joudah, you might also like, september twilight, the tolstoyans, thirty clocks strike the hour, new perspectives, enduring writing..

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Trending Post : 12 Powerful Discussion Strategies to Engage Students

Engaging Post-Reading Activities

Whether your students are engaged in whole-class texts, literature circles, book clubs, or independent reading, you’ll need to gauge their analytical thinking. There are traditional assessment tools, like summary writing, graphic organizers, and quizzes, but after a while, these approaches can start to feel stale, both for the teacher and students. In this post, you’ll find a handful of unique post-reading activities to use with older students.

These assignments will help to keep reading discussions and assessments fresh. However, one size does not fit all. Consider offering students choices of how they can show their learning. Also, balance is important. Assessments are only fun when students don’t feel inundated with them.

Most of the post-reading activities you’ll read about in this post can be used with books, short stories, articles, poetry, and plays. They really aren’t genre specific, which makes them incredibly versatile. Plus, many of them can be used both  during and  after  reading.

1. MAKE CONNECTIONS WITH MIND MAPS

Mind maps can be a great way to synthesize what students have gleaned from reading a book. Plus, there are so many ways to approach them! My favorite is to focus on a particular standard.

Have students put the title of the book in the middle of the map. Then, break down the standard. For example, let’s look at CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.3: “Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.”

Now, let’s think about what skills are embedded in this standard. In order to be proficient with the standard, students need to:

• analyze lines of dialogue
• analyze story events
• identify how dialogue and events propel action
• analyze how dialogue and events contribute to characterization
• explain how dialogue and events provoke characters to make decisions

In a mind map, then, students could create one extension from the center to explore each of these skills. Not sure how to help students begin with mind maps as post-reading activities? This visual is helpful !

Try the same idea with sketchnotes , which are amazing processing assignments to use with online learning.

2. ENCOURAGE PERSONAL REACTIONS WITH BOOKSNAPS

If you’d like to capture snippets of what passages are resonating most with students, ask them to create a booksnap journal as they read! This project can be fun to flip or scroll through because you will be able to see patterns. Are students mainly choosing humorous quotes or events? If so, push their thinking. What techniques is the author using to create this humorous effect (RL.8.6)?

Booksnaps provide us with opportunities to talk with students about what they are reading during conferences and small group discussions. Plus, they can easily be incorporated into a digital portfolio or reading journal.

Need a ready-to-go activity? Snapabook is a fun, alternative activity I created to tie together booksnaps with pop culture (Snapchat).

3. SCAFFOLD ANALYSIS WHILE READING WITH COLOR

If you need a low-key, quick post-reading activity that zeroes in on main idea and text evidence, try asking students to re-read with color. This exercise is less involved, so it’s great when you only have a short amount of time.

To complete this activity, students will need a text, a Post-It, and three different colors of markers or colored pencils. The basic premise is to hone in on a specific skill or standard – like finding the main idea, identifying text structure, or highlighting vocabulary. To do so, scaffold students’ reflection about the text with three questions that build. With each response, students draw their ideas (in a different color) on their Post-It.

When finished, have students share in small groups, or build the Post-Its into a gallery walk so that students can comment on one another’s work. Students can also re-read with color virtually with a wide variety of tech tools – Notability, Slides, Jamboard, and Glogster, just to name a few..

Read this post about re-reading with color to find more details to get started!

4. THINK CRITICALLY BY EVALUATING BOOK COVERS

Post-reading activities often involve writing. Students need to write informative essays. Yet, they don’t always have to be as traditional as we might expect. This activity allows students to reflect on what they have read, analyze the way the book is marketed, evaluate the effectiveness and accuracy of the cover, and then write about their findings.

Students who enjoy being artistic will love evaluating and re-designing the cover of their text. When we ask students to evaluate book covers, we are really asking them to first analyze what marketing tools are used to sell the book…and then to reflect on whether or not those marketing tools are effective and representative of the book itself.

This book cover activity can be fun to pair with book talks, elevator speeches, book clubs, literature circles, evaluating texts units, and reading workshop.

5. RESPOND WITH TECH USING FLIP GRID

Flip Grid is a powerful way to get students talking about their texts. As a post-reading activity, try having middle and high school students respond to an essential question…or pose one!…using an app like Flip Grid. Classmates can respond to the original videos to keep the discussion going.

A couple things to think about if you are considering using this platform:

It can be  extremely time consuming to listen to and respond to Flip Grid videos. Middle and high school teachers know. With over 100 students total, it just doesn’t make sense to sit in front of the screen for hours on end. So, brainstorm how you can make it work for you.

• Do your students participate in literature circles? Just have them post one video for the group.
• Incorporate Flip Grid into a menu of options so that students can  choose  it, but not everyone will end up doing it.
• Stagger due dates so that videos are submitted at different times.
• Have students respond to one another’s FlipGrid posts!

6. GET ARTSY AND CONCISE WITH ONE PAGERS

Students are often drawn to one pagers – digital or print! They have just the right amount of creativity and flexibility. Plus, they are only one page, which is much less daunting than an essay! Of course, one pagers can’t ever replace essays completely, but they can be a breath of fresh air when you want students to analyze a text without creating large stacks of work to assess.

If you haven’t explored one pagers yet, you’ll notice that students need scaffolding. They are often confused when presented with a blank page and vague directions. Read more about one pagers , their benefit, and using them as a post-reading activity. Here are the scaffolded resources I use for fiction and informational texts .

7. CREATE GALLERY WALKS 

Use QR codes or educational playlists as part of a gallery walk. QR codes or links on a playlist can lead students to videos and articles. If your students are reading Romeo and Juliet , for instance, find high-interest videos and articles that feature a variety of opinions about or interpretations of the work. Then, have students respond in small groups, in a back-channel chat, on a discussion board, or in a breakout group.

To illustrate, pretend students just finished reading  The Hunger Games . Ask students who have read it to add to a short graffiti wall on Jamboard or Slides to share their thoughts and an extension question.

One quick tip for using QR codes! Make sure that once you create them, the links won’t expire. Some websites will save your QR files for you to keep them active, but others will not. If you plan to use the activity again in the future, choosing the right QR code generator will save you time.

CONSIDERATIONS…

So there you have it! Seven post-reading activities that capitalize on technology or students’ attraction to visuals. As a final thought, remember that students need complete clarity about post-reading activities they are being asked to complete. We need to be able to explain…

• What is the purpose of this assignment?
• How is it going to help students learn?
• How will students be able to tell they are learning? Does this project make growth visible?
• Is the project relevant to students? Can you use it to tie in students’ interests?
• When will students receive your feedback? Without meaningful and timely feedback, projects typically are less effective.
• Who is the intended audience? Can the project be shared with a wider audience? Authentic audiences are motivating!

And, even though many of these post-reading activities are visually appealing, we need to make sure that we are selecting projects because they will truly tell us what we want to know about student learning, rather than because they might look pretty hanging up. Of course, that may be a bonus!

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Essays About Books: Top 5 Examples and Writing Prompts

Books open portals to new worlds and display new knowledge inspired from the old to the new. Here are some published essays about books and prompts you can use.

Books are a way for the past to teach the present and preserve the present for the future. Books come in all shapes and sizes. In addition, technology has improved the way books can be accessed with eBooks and audiobooks that are more accessible and hassle-free to use. 

No matter what genre, a book aids its readers in gaining valuable knowledge, improving vocabulary, and many more. Following are 5 essays with books as their subject:

1. Why Are Books So Important in Our Life by Ankita Yadav

2. essay on books for students by kanak mishra, 3. listening to books by maggie gram, 4. short essay on books and reading by sastry, 5. long essay on books by ram, 1. do we still need libraries, 2. the names an author gives to their characters, 3. do you read or write, 4. your favorite book, 5. books and inspirations, 6. the book cover, 7. paper books vs. digital copies, 8. why read the book you hate, 9. the book is better than the movie.

“Books are the best companions in our life. They never leave us alone and are like our best friends.”

For Yadav, a book is someone’s best friend, guide, all-time teacher, and keeper of various information. The essay talks about how reading a physical book is better than watching movies or using modern technologies for entertainment and learning purposes. The author also believes that autobiography books of great people inspire students and motivate them to work hard to achieve their goals in life.

“Though the technology has so much changed that we can take information about anything through internet… importance of books has not decreased…”

The writer describes books as the best option for self-learners. They don’t only note an issue, topic, or story but also put effort and emotions into their writing. Next, she discusses the types of books and their subcategories. Finally, she gives tips about finding a good book to read.

“The possibility of reading while also doing something else produces one of the stranger phenomenological characteristics of audio book reading: you can have a whole set of unrelated and real (if only partially attended) experiences while simultaneously experiencing a book.”

Gram’s primary focus in this essay is audiobooks, discussing their history and how audiobooks started. She also mentions how audiobooks help blind people who find it challenging to read braille books. The author also compares physical books and audiobooks to help the reader choose better for a long drive, house cleaning, or simply doing anything other than reading. 

“Books are standing counsellors and preachers, always at hand and always neutral.”

Sastry considers novels the best option when one is tired and looking for healthy recreational activity. Still, the author didn’t forget the fact that reading history, science, religion, and other more “serious” books can also bring gratification to their readers. Books offer unlimited benefits if well used, but not when abused, and as the writer said, “no book can be good if studied negligently.”

“Books are important because they provide a few things that are key to an open and intelligent society.”

The essay is best to be read by students from classes 7 to 10, as it gives the simplest explanation of why it is vital to read a book during their spare time or extended holidays. Ram says people get inspired and receive life lessons by reading books. Reading classic and newer books with lots of words of wisdom and new ideas are better than wasting time and learning nothing.

Are you looking for writing applications to help you improve your essay? See the seven best essay writing apps to use.

Top 10 Writing Prompts on Essays About Books

Writing essays about books can be easy as many subtopics exist. However, it can also be challenging to pick a specific subcategory. To help you narrow it down, here are ten easy writing prompts that you can use.

Libraries help many people – from bibliophiles to job seekers and students. They offer free access to books, newspapers, and computers. But with modern devices making it easier to get information, are libraries still needed? Use this prompt to discuss the importance of libraries and the consequences if all of them close down.

Some authors like to give their characters very unusual names, such as “America Singer” from the book The Selection by Keira Cass. Do you think characters having strange names take away the reader’s attention to the plot? Does it make the book more interesting or odd? Suppose you are writing a story; how do you name the characters and why?

They say writers need readers and vice versa, but which role do you find more challenging? Is writing harder than finding the best book, story, and poetry to read? 

Use this prompt to describe their roles and explain how readers and writers hold each other up.

There is always a unique book that one will never forget. What is your favorite book of all time, and why? Write an essay about why you consider that book your favorite. You can also persuade others to try to read it. 

If you have more than one preference, describe them and tell the readers why you can’t choose between your favorite books. Check out these essays about literature .

Authors inspiring their readers to try something new by reading their book are not always intentional but usually happens. Have you ever experienced wanting to move to a new place or change career paths after reading something? 

Use this prompt to share your experience and opinion on readers who make significant life changes because books and characters influence them in a story.

Have you ever gone to a book shop to find a book recommended to you but didn’t buy or read it because of the cover? They said never judge a book by its cover. In this prompt, you can.

Share what you think the book is all about based on its cover. Then, make a follow-up writing if you were right or wrong after reading the book’s contents.

Studies confirmed more benefits to reading physical books than digital books, such as retaining information longer if read from a printed copy. Are you more of a traditional or modern reader? Use this prompt to explain your answer and briefly discuss the pros and cons of each type of book in your opinion.

Are you ever tasked to read a book you don’t like? Share your experience and tell the reader if you finished the book, learned anything from it, and what it feels like to force yourself to read a book you hate. You can also add if you come to like it in the end.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is undisputedly one of the most popular books turned into movies. However, avid readers consider books better than movies because they can echo the main protagonist’s thoughts.

Do you have a favorite book adapted into a film? Did you like it? Write about what makes the movie version better or underwhelming. You can also include why movies are more limited than books. 

Do you still feel like there is something wrong with your essay? Here is a guide about grammar and punctuation to help you.

If you still need help, our guide to grammar and syntax explains more.

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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• Essay on Reading Books

The habit of Reading Books is considered to be one of the most elite habits of all. Books are the means to store precious information either in a textual or pictorial manner. A book is such a wonderful and magnificent object that it takes a whole different amount of passion and discipline to construct a book and the same passion to study and sink that knowledge within. Here are a few sample essays on reading books.

100 Words Essay on Reading Books

200 words essay on reading books, 500 words essay on reading books.

Reading books is an incredible experience that can transport you to different worlds, introduce you to new ideas and cultures, and broaden your understanding of the world. It's a form of escape from the daily routine, and a way to engage with characters, stories and events that would not be possible in real life. Whether you prefer fiction or nonfiction, books have the power to challenge, inspire, and entertain. With the turn of each page, you gain new knowledge, develop empathy, and engage in introspection. Reading books is a lifelong journey of discovery and growth that can enrich your life in countless ways.

Reading books is an activity that has been enjoyed by people of all ages and cultures for centuries. This pastime offers numerous benefits, both for individuals and society as a whole.

One of the most significant benefits of reading books is the improvement of one's cognitive skills . By reading, we engage our brains, and the more we read, the more we exercise our cognitive abilities, including our ability to concentrate, comprehend, and retain information. This leads to enhanced problem-solving skills, better memory and a greater ability to understand complex concepts.

Another benefit of reading books is the expansion of one's knowledge and understanding of the world. Through reading, we have the opportunity to gain insights into different cultures, time periods, and ways of life. This can broaden our perspectives and help us become more informed and understanding citizens of the world. In addition, books can challenge our beliefs and assumptions, providing opportunities for personal growth and intellectual development.

Reading books is also a great form of entertainment . Whether we are reading a mystery, a romance, or a science-fiction novel, books can provide hours of escape and enjoyment. They allow us to immerse ourselves in different worlds, meet new characters, and experience new emotions. This form of entertainment provides a welcome break from the stresses of daily life and can help reduce anxiety and promote relaxation.

The habit of reading books is not just a hobby but a complete lifestyle . The way it brings development in one’s character and personality from within is just magical. The importance of reading is to give people the ability to self-study but has numerous other benefits. When you read, you explore your true prospect of thinking. You get the venture of how the same lines could deliver a brand new set of thoughts and pictures in your mind just with a little change in the emotions. This is the kind of self-exploration reading provides.

Having a diverse set of knowledge can be of great help as it removes the bar of limited knowledge . Every social group has a different set of interests and by consuming all of that in yourself, you allow yourself to become a part of any group easily. A person who consumes more knowledge is considered the wisest. Your ideas are what draws people to you, wanting them to listen more and makes you one of the interesting people they interact with.

Reading is the most important means of human-to-human communication and getting to know different cultures, leading to the development and maturation of human language abilities, and is the source of development and mature human personality. Reading is very important to increase self-confidence, develop and strengthen character by acquiring a wealth of information and experience that a person needs in all areas of life, and to become an educated person. Not everyone in their lives gets the gift of knowledge and the ability to comprehend what they are looking at. Not everyone is privileged enough to be able to widen their knowledge without the help of someone else.

Reading is an art, and to have this art is equal to having the greatest weapon in your hand. No one can steal your ability to read once you learn it. You become free to consume knowledge about any topic you like.

Significance of Reading

Reading leads to the expansion of human thinking and intellectual capacities and strengthens your spirit. Every genre teaches something whether it is fictional or non-fictional. When fiction teaches you to imagine, self-help teaches you how to live life to the fullest. Reading is not limited to books only, you can read wherever you want, whatever you want and whenever you want and it all will be worth it. Knowledge is never known to be a curse and what is not a curse, is always beneficial.

My Reading Experience

The kind of books that got me into reading are self-help books. They inspired me in a way no other genre could. The writer Mark Manson is the greatest of all time to me. If you'll just search for self-help books over the internet then among the best sellers, two of the books would be his. The kind of discipline they brought into my life transformed me into a completely different person. These kinds of books give us an opportunity to dive deep into ourselves and learn about our true potential which is what happened to me and brought me into writing.

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Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

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What to do after reading a book: 8 Post Reading Activities to enhance your book experience

Suto isemin.

on December 10, 2023

There is a strong way to start reading a book . Likewise, there exists a strong way to finish a non-academic book.

The reading process doesn’t end at the last page of a book. One way I know this is by the feeling I get to take certain actions — usually after reading a good book. Whenever I ignore these feelings, I experience situations where I am unable to make connections with ideas from the book or atleast, remember basic themes.

I reckon this to be a result of my refusal to allow enough book processing and engagement time that create lasting impressions.

In this post, we list out several post reading activities so you have a chance to do more with what you acquire from books. Or at bare minimum, better utilize the power of knowledge in books .

What to do after reading a book.

What should I do after reading a book?

Intuitively, you know there is a more comprehensive answer than “Go read another one” .

You are 100% correct. It isn’t the best reading practice to jump from one self-help book to another immediately after reading the last page of interest.

You should spend some time engaging with what you have learned. The idea is to have a personal experience (feelings and activities) around what stood out to you.

Post Reading Activities for Non-Academic Books.

Here are some activities to do after reading a book to build consistency and momentum:

#1. Reflection: Take a moment to reflect on what you read.

After finishing the book, take some time to pause and reflect on your reading experience. Consider the overall message of the book, the main themes, how it made you feel and your thoughts about it.

Some post-reading questions are;

What was my expectation when choosing to read this book? Was it met?

On a scale of 1-10, how was my experience?

Off the top of my head, what are 3 takeaways from this book?

What’s an idea or quote that resonated deeply within me? Why?

What’s one lesson from this book I would practice this week?

#2. Book Review: Write a book review.

Writing a book review can help verbalize your opinions about the book and organize different ideas into a coherent message.

Take 20-30 minutes to draft out a review.

P.S: It doesn’t have to be overly technical and critical. It just has to capture your “2 cents” about the book offering another perspective as reader.

You can take it a step further by sharing your review on your personal social media account, or community-based book websites.

Want your book review featured on Chieflings.com , head over to our contact page and shoot us an email.

#3. Discussion: Discuss with peers:

Engage in conversations with other people who have read the book. Join book clubs and other online communities that connect you with individuals who share similar interests.

Sharing perspectives and receiving others’ insights can truly deepen your understanding of the book and produce even more deeper insights.

#4: Research: Learn about the author and context.

Dive deeper into the author’s background, their previous works, and the historical and cultural context in which the book was written. This information can provide important context and enhance your understanding of the book.

#5. Comparison: Compare with other books.

This is advised if the book you read is part of a series or a similar genre, consider comparing it with other books you’ve read to see what differences and similarities. This can help you draw connections and identify patterns especially if you are interested in writing.

#6. Application: Apply lessons or ideas to your life.

Reflect on how the book’s themes or lessons can be applied to your life. Practice what you have learned in the book and make sure it is relatable.

This post reading activity should be based on the ideas gotten from reflection in activity #1.

#7. Exploration: Read reviews.

Look for professional reviews or literary analyses of the book, especially educational books. This can provide different perspectives and shed light on elements you might have missed while you were reading it.

A good place to start is our collection of book summaries related to self-leadership.

#8: Recommend the book.

If you enjoyed the book, consider recommending it to others who might appreciate it. It could be the reason someone is equipped to achieve a particular goal or desire.

Sharing good reads can spread the joy of reading it too. This allows you to fully appreciate the book you’ve just finished.

Final word on Post Reading Activities.

Remember that reading is a unique experience for different individuals. You are at liberty to choose what post reading activities to execute based on your preferences, interests, and schedule. The key is to engage with the material and derive meaning from the books you read.

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Questions Before, During, and After Reading

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Asking questions before, during, and after reading.

To aid their comprehension, skillful readers ask themselves questions before, during, and after they read. You can help students become more proficient by modeling this process and encouraging them to use it when they read independently.

Why Ask Questions Before, During, and After Reading?

Dolores Durkin's research in 1979 showed that most teachers asked students questions after they had read, as opposed to questioning to improve comprehension before or while they read. In the late 1990s, further research (Pressley, et al. 1998) revealed that despite the abundance of research supporting questioning before, during, and after reading to help comprehension, teachers still favored post-reading comprehension questions.

Researchers have also found that when adult readers are asked to " think aloud " as they read, they employ a wide variety of comprehension strategies, including asking and answering questions before, during, and after reading (Pressley and Afflerbach 1995). Proficient adult readers:

• Are aware of why they are reading the text
• Preview and make predictions
• Read selectively
• Make connections and associations with the text based on what they already know
• Refine predictions and expectations
• Use context to identify unfamiliar words
• Reread and make notes
• Evaluate the quality of the text
• Review important points in the text
• Consider how the information might be used in the future

Successful reading is not simply the mechanical process of "decoding" text. Rather, it is a process of active inquiry.

Good authors anticipate the reader's questions and plant questions in the reader's mind (think of a title such as,  Are You My Mother?  by P.D. Eastman). In this way, reading becomes a collaboration between the reader and the author. The author's job is to raise questions and then answer them – or provide several possible answers. Readers cooperate by asking the right questions, paying careful attention to the author's answers, and asking questions of their own.

Examples of Before, During, and After Reading Questions

Before reading — at the beginning of a new book, before reading — continuing a book students are reading, during reading, after reading — at the end of the book, after reading — continuing a book students are reading, how to ask questions before, during, and after reading.

While reading a book, article, or directions, think aloud to learn to ask questions before, during, and after reading. Document each question you think of on a post-it note attached to the relevant text. These questions could relate to the author's choice of title, a specific vocabulary word, or the future application of the information.

During read-aloud times, model questioning by verbalizing your thoughts. Emphasize that asking questions before, during, and after reading enhances understanding, regardless of the reader's age. Ask questions such as:

"What clues does the title give me about the story?"

Pre-select several stopping points within the text to ask and answer reading questions. This is also an excellent time to model "repair strategies" to correct miscomprehension. Start reading the text, and ask yourself questions while reading:

"What do I understand from what I just read?"

Then reread the text, asking the following questions when you are finished:

"Which of my predictions were right? What information from the text tells me that I am correct?"

Encourage students to ask their own questions after you have modeled this strategy e, and write all their questions on chart paper. Students can be grouped to answer one another's questions and generate new ones based on discussions. Be sure the focus is not on finding the correct answers, because many questions may be subjective, but on curiosity, wondering, and asking thoughtful questions.

After students become aware of the best times to ask questions during the reading process, be sure to ask them a variety of questions that:

• Can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the text
• Have answers that might be different for everyone
• Have answers that can be found in the text
• Clarify the author's intent
• Can help clarify the meaning
• Help them make  inferences
• Help them make predictions
• Help them make connections to other texts or  prior knowledge

As students begin to read text independently, you should continue to model the questioning process and encourage students to use it often. In the upper elementary and middle school grades, a  framework  for questions to ask before, during, and after reading can serve as a guide as students work with more challenging texts and begin to internalize comprehension strategies. You can use an overhead projector to jot notes on the framework as you "think aloud" while reading a text. As students become comfortable with the questioning strategy, they may use the guide independently while reading, with the goal of generating questions before, during, and after reading to increase comprehension.

How Can You  Stretch  Students' Thinking?

The best way to stretch students' thinking about a text is to help them ask increasingly challenging questions. Some of the most challenging questions are "Why?" questions about the author's intentions and the design of the text. For example:

"Why do you think the author chose this particular setting?"

Another way to challenge readers is to ask them open-ended questions that require evidence from the text to answer. For example:

"What does Huck think about girls? What is your evidence?" unlike

Be sure to explicitly model your own challenging questions while reading aloud a variety of texts, including novels, subject-area textbooks, articles, and nonfiction. Help students see that answering challenging questions can help them understand text at a deeper level, ultimately making reading a more enjoyable and valuable experience.

As students become proficient in generating challenging questions, have them group the questions at the time they were asked (before, during, or after reading). Students can determine their own categories, justify their reasons for placing questions into the categories, and determine how this can help their reading comprehension.

Lesson Plans

Lesson Plan: Questioning,  The Mitten

This lesson is designed to introduce primary students to the importance of asking questions before, during, and after listening to a story. In this lesson, using the story  The Mitten  by Jan Brett, students learn how to become good readers by asking questions. This is the first lesson in a set of questioning lessons designed for primary grades.

Lesson Plan: Questioning,  Grandfather's Journey

This lesson is for intermediate students using the strategy with the book,  Grandfather's Journey , by Allen Say.

Lesson Plan: Questioning,  Koko's Kitten

This lesson is designed to establish primary students' skills in asking questions before, during, and after they listen to a story. You can help students learn to become better readers by modeling how and when you ask questions while reading aloud the true story,  Koko's Kitten , by Dr. Francine Patterson. This is the second lesson in a set of questioning lessons designed for primary grades.

Lesson Plan: Asking Pre-Reading Questions

This is a language arts lesson for students in grades 3-5. Students will learn about asking questions before reading and will make predictions based on the discussion of the questions.

Lesson Plan: Asking Questions When Reading

In this lesson, the teacher will read  The Wall  by Eve Bunting with the purpose of focusing on asking important questions. The students and the teacher will then categorize the questions according to the criteria for each.

See the research that supports this strategy

Durk, D. (1979) What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction. Reading Research Quarterly , 14, 481-533.

Pressley, M., & Afflerbach, P. (1995).  Verbal protocols of reading: The nature of constructively responsive reading.  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching. New York: Guilford.

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Are White Women Better Now?

What anti-racism workshops taught us

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W e had to correct her, and we knew how to do it by now. We would not sit quietly in our white-bodied privilege, nor would our corrections be given apologetically or packaged with niceties. There I was, one of about 30 people attending a four-day-long Zoom seminar called “The Toxic Trends of Whiteness,” hosted by the group Education for Racial Equity.

An older white woman whom I’ll call Stacy had confessed to the group that she was ashamed of being white, and that she hoped in her next life she wouldn’t be white anymore. This provided us with a major learning moment. One participant began by amping herself up, intoning the concepts we’d been taught over the past two days: “Grounding, rooting, removing Bubble Wrap.” Then she got into it. “What I heard you say about wanting to come back as a dark-skinned person in your next life was racist, because as white people we don’t have the luxury of trying on aspects of people of color.”

“Notice how challenging that was,” our facilitator, Carlin Quinn, said. “That’s what getting your reps in looks like.”

Another woman went next, explaining that Stacy seemed to see people of color as better or more desirable, that her statement was “an othering.” Quinn prompted her to sum it up in one sentence: “When you said that you wish you would come back in your next life as a dark-skinned person, I experienced that as racist because …”

“That was racist because it exoticized Black people.”

“Great,” Quinn said. She pushed for more from everyone, and more came. Stacy’s statement was romanticizing . It was extractive . It was erasing . Stacy sat very still. Eventually we finished. Stacy thanked everyone, her voice thin.

The seminar would culminate with a talk from Robin DiAngelo, the most prominent anti-racist educator working in America. I had signed up because I was curious about her teachings, which had suddenly become so popular. DiAngelo’s 2018 book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism , had been a best seller for years by the time I joined the toxic whiteness group in May 2021. But during the heat of the Black Lives Matter protests, her influence boomed. She was brought in to advise Democratic members of the House of Representatives. Coca-Cola, Disney, and Lockheed Martin sent their employees through DiAngelo-inspired diversity trainings; even the defense company Raytheon launched an anti-racism DEI program.

In the DiAngelo doctrine, the issue was not individual racists doing singular bad acts. All white people are racist, because racism is structural. To fix one’s inherent racism requires constant work, and it requires white people to talk about their whiteness. Seminars like hers exploded as anti-racism was shifted from a project of changing laws and fighting systems into a more psychological movement: something you did within yourself. It was therapeutic. It wasn’t about elevating others so much as about deconstructing yourself in hopes of eventually deconstructing the systems around you.

Read: Abolish DEI statements

Anti-racism courses are less popular today. This may in part be because more people have become willing to question the efficacy of corporate DEI programs, but it’s surely also because their lessons now show up everywhere. In March at UCLA Medical School, during a required course, a guest speaker had the first-year medical students kneel and pray to “Mama Earth” before saying that medicine was “white science,” as first reported by The Washington Free Beacon . The course I took was just a preview of what’s come to be expected in workplaces and schools all over the country.

DiAngelo and her fellow thinkers are right in many ways. The economic fallout of structural racism persists in this country—fallout from rules, for example, about where Black people could buy property, laws that for generations have influenced who is rich and who is poor. The laws may be gone, but plenty of racists are left. And the modern anti-racist movement is right that we all probably do have some racism and xenophobia in us. The battle of modernity and liberalism is fighting against our tribal natures and animal selves.

I went into the workshop skeptical that contemporary anti-racist ideology was helpful in that fight. I left exhausted and emotional and, honestly, moved. I left as the teachers would want me to leave: thinking a lot about race and my whiteness, the weight of my skin. But telling white people to think about how deeply white they are, telling them that their sense of objectivity and individualism are white, that they need to stop trying to change the world and focus more on changing themselves … well, I’m not sure that has the psychological impact the teachers are hoping it will, let alone that it will lead to any tangible improvement in the lives of people who aren’t white.

M uch of what I learned in “The Toxic Trends of Whiteness” concerned language. We are “white bodies,” Quinn explained, but everyone else is a “body of culture.” This is because white bodies don’t know a lot about themselves, whereas “bodies of culture know their history. Black bodies know.”

The course began with easy questions (names, what we do, what we love), and an icebreaker: What are you struggling with or grappling with related to your whiteness? We were told that our answers should be “as close to the bone as possible, as naked, as emotionally revealing.” We needed to feel uncomfortable.

One woman loved gardening. Another loved the sea. People said they felt exhausted by constantly trying to fight their white supremacy. A woman with a biracial child said she was scared that her whiteness could harm her child. Some expressed frustration. It was hard, one participant said, that after fighting the patriarchy for so long, white women were now “sort of being told to step aside.” She wanted to know how to do that without feeling resentment. The woman who loved gardening was afraid of “being a middle-aged white woman and being called a Karen.”

A woman who worked in nonprofits admitted that she was struggling to overcome her own skepticism. Quinn picked up on that: How did that skepticism show up? “Wanting to say, ‘Prove it.’ Are we sure that racism is the explanation for everything?”

John McWhorter: The dehumanizing condescension of White Fragility

She was nervous, and that was good, Quinn said: “It’s really an important gauge, an edginess of honesty and vulnerability—like where it kind of makes you want to throw up.”

One participant was a diversity, equity, and inclusion manager at a consulting firm, and she was struggling with how to help people of color while not taking up space as a white person. It was hard to center and decenter whiteness at the same time.

A woman from San Francisco had started crying before she even began speaking. “I’m here because I’m a racist. I’m here because my body has a trauma response to my own whiteness and other people’s whiteness.” A woman who loved her cats was struggling with “how to understand all the atrocities of being a white body.” Knowing that her very existence perpetuated whiteness made her feel like a drag on society. “The darkest place I go is thinking it would be better if I weren’t here. It would at least be one less person perpetuating these things.”

T he next day we heard from DiAngelo herself. Quinn introduced her as “transformative for white-bodied people across the world.” DiAngelo is quite pretty, and wore a mock turtleneck and black rectangular glasses. She started by telling us that she would use the term people of color , but also that some people of color found the term upsetting. She would therefore vary the terms she used, rotating through imperfect language. Sometimes people of color , other times racialized , to indicate that race is not innate and rather is something that has been done to someone. Sometimes she would use the acronym BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color), but she would then make a conscious grammatical mistake: “If I say ‘BIPOC,’ I find that’s a kind of harsh acronym. I usually add people at the end to humanize it a bit, even though grammatically that’s not correct,” she said.

Language is a tricky thing for the movement. The idea is that you should be open and raw when you speak, but you can get so much wrong. It’s no wonder that even Robin DiAngelo herself is worried. (At one point she recommended a book by Reni Eddo-Lodge—“a Black Brit,” DiAngelo said. For a moment she looked scared. “I hope that’s not an offensive term.” Quinn chimed in to say she thought it was okay, but DiAngelo looked introspective. “It sounds harsh. The Brit part sounded harsh.”)

DiAngelo wanted to remind us that she is white. She emphasized the wh —, giving the word a lushness and intensity. “I’m very clear today that I am wh ite, that I have a wh ite worldview. I have a wh ite frame of reference. I move through the world with a wh ite experience.”

She introduced some challenges. First was white people’s “lack of humility”: “If you are white and you have not devoted years, years—not that you read some books last summer—to sustained study, struggle, and work and practice and mistake making and relationship building, your opinions while you have them are necessarily uninformed and superficial.”

“Challenge No. 2 is the precious ideology of individualism, the idea that every one of us is unique and special.”

She prepared us for what would come next: “I will be generalizing about white people.” She was sharing her screen and showed us an image of middle-aged white women: “This is the classic board of a nonprofit.” She threw up a picture of high-school students in a local paper with the headline “Outstanding Freshmen Join Innovative Teacher-Education Program.” Almost all the teenagers were white. “This education program was not and could not have been innovative. Our educational system is probably one of the most efficient, effective mechanisms for the reproduction of racial inequality.” Lingering on the picture, she asked, “Do you feel the weight of that whiteness?”

From the September 2021 issue: Robin DiAngelo and the problem with anti-racist self-help

Another image. It was a white man. “I don’t know who that is,” she said. “I just Googled white guy , but most white people live segregated lives.”

When someone calls a white person out as racist, she told us, the white person will typically deny it. “Denying, arguing, withdrawing, crying. ‘I don’t understand.’ Seeking forgiveness. ‘I feel so bad, I feel so bad. Tell me you still love me.’” She paused. “Emotions are political. We need to build our stamina to endure some shame, some guilt,” she said. Quinn broke in to say that intentions are the province of the privileged. But consequences are the province of the subjugated.

Someone who has integrated an anti-racist perspective, DiAngelo told us, should be able to say: “I hold awareness of my whiteness in all settings, and it guides how I engage. I raise issues about racism over and over, both in public and in private … You want to go watch a movie with me? You’re going to get my analysis of how racism played in that movie. I have personal relationships and know the private lives of a range of people of color, including Black people. And there are also people of color in my life who I specifically ask to coach me, and I pay them for their time.”

I was surprised by this idea that I should pay Black friends and acquaintances by the hour to tutor me—it sounded a little offensive. But then I considered that if someone wanted me to come to their house and talk with them about their latent feelings of homophobia, I wouldn’t mind being Venmoed afterward.

When DiAngelo was done, Quinn asked if we had questions. Very few people did, and that was disappointing—the fact that white bodies had nothing to say about a profound presentation. Silence and self-consciousness were part of the problem. “People’s lives are on the line. This is life or death for bodies of culture.” We needed to work on handling criticism. If it made you shake, that was good.

One of the few men in the group said he felt uncomfortable being told to identify as a racist. Here he’d just been talking with all of his friends about not being racist. Now he was going to “say that I might have been wrong here.” He noticed he felt “resistance to saying ‘I’m racist.’”

Quinn understood; that was normal. He just needed to try again, say “I am a racist” and believe it. The man said: “I am racist.” What did he feel? He said he was trying not to fight it. Say it again. “I am racist.”

“Do you feel sadness or grief?”

“Sadness and grief feel true,” he said.

“That’s beautiful,” Quinn said.

Some members of the group were having a breakthrough. Stacy said she was “seeing them finally … Like, wow, are there moments when this white body chooses to see a body of culture when it isn’t dangerous for them?” One woman realized she was “a walking, talking node of white supremacy.” Another finally saw how vast whiteness was: “So vast and so, so big.”

F or a while , a dinner series called Race to Dinner for white women to talk about their racism was very popular, though now it seems a little try-hard. The hosts—Saira Rao and Regina Jackson—encourage women who have paid up to $625 a head to abandon any notion that they are not racist. At one point Rao, who is Indian American, and Jackson, who is Black, publicized the dinners with a simple message: “Dear white women: You cause immeasurable pain and damage to Black, Indigenous and brown women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly discuss how *exactly* you cause this pain and damage.”

One could also attend a workshop called “What’s Up With White Women? Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege Over Lunch,” hosted by the authors of What’s Up With White Women? Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege in Pursuit of Racial Justice (the authors are two white women). Or you could go to “Finding Freedom: White Women Taking On Our Own White Supremacy,” hosted by We Are Finding Freedom (a for-profit run by two white women). The National Association of Social Workers’ New York City chapter advertised a workshop called “Building White Women’s Capacity to Do Anti-racism Work” (hosted by the founder of U Power Change, who is a white woman).

So many of the workshops have been run by and aimed at white women. White women specifically seem very interested in these courses, perhaps because self-flagellation is seen as a classic female virtue. The hated archetype of the anti-racist movement is the Karen . No real equivalent exists for men. Maybe the heavily armed prepper comes close, but he’s not quite the same, in that a Karen is someone you’ll run into in a coffee shop, and a Karen is also someone who is disgusted with herself. Where another generation of white women worked to hate their bodies, my generation hates its “whiteness” (and I don’t mean skin color, necessarily, as this can also be your internalized whiteness). People are always demanding that women apologize for something and women seem to love doing it. Women will pay for the opportunity. We’ll thank you for it.

Tyler Austin Harper: I’m a black professor. You don’t need to bring that up.

After DiAngelo, I went to another course, “Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism.” That one was more about what my white flesh itself means and how to physically manifest anti-racism—“embodying anti-racism.” Those sessions were co-led by Resmaa Menakem, a therapist and the author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies .

Menakem stressed how important it was not to do his exercises with people of color, because it would wound them: “Do not have bodies of culture in a group of white bodies. White bodies with white bodies and bodies of culture with bodies of culture.”

The harm caused by processing your whiteness with a person of color had also been stressed in the previous course—the book DiAngelo had recommended by Reni Eddo-Lodge was called Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race . But at the same time, Quinn had said that we should talk with people of different races about our journey and let them guide us. It all seemed a bit contradictory.

One participant had a question for Menakem about community building. She was concerned because she had a mixed-race group of friends, and she wanted to be sure she wasn’t harming her Black friends by talking about this work.

“There’s no way you’re going to be able to keep Black women safe,” Menakem said. “If you’re talking about race, if race is part of the discussion, those Black women are going to get injured in the process.”

“That’s my worry,” she said. The problem was that she and her friends were actually already in “like, an anti-racism study group.” Menakem was definitive: “Don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t want white folks gazing at that process.”

A few years have passed since I was in these workshops, and I wonder if the other participants are “better” white people now. What would that even mean, exactly? Getting outside their ethnic tribe—or the opposite?

At one point Menakem intoned, “All white bodies cause racialized stress and wounding to bodies of culture. Everybody say it. ‘All white bodies cause racialized stress and wounding to bodies of culture.’” We said it, over and over again. I collapsed into it, thinking: I am careless; I am selfish; I do cause harm. The more we said it, the more it started to feel like a release. It felt so sad. But it also—and this seemed like a problem—felt good.

What if fighting for justice could just be a years-long confessional process and didn’t require doing anything tangible at all? What if I could defeat white supremacy from my lovely living room, over tea, with other white people? Personally I don’t think that’s how it works. I’m not sold. But maybe my whiteness has blinded me. The course wrapped up, and Menakem invited us all to an upcoming two-day workshop.

This essay is adapted from the forthcoming book, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History.

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The Last Thing This Supreme Court Could Do to Shock Us

There will be no more self-soothing after this..

For three long years, Supreme Court watchers mollified themselves (and others) with vague promises that when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. There were promising signs: They had, after all, refused to wade into the Trumpian efforts to set aside the election results in 2020. They had, after all, hewed to a kind of sanity in batting away Trumpist claims about presidential records (with the lone exception of Clarence Thomas, too long marinated in the Ginni-scented Kool-Aid to be capable of surprising us, but he was just one vote). We promised ourselves that there would be cool heads and grand bargains and that even though the court might sometimes help Trump in small ways, it would privilege the country in the end. We kept thinking that at least for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts , the voice of reasoned never-Trumpers might still penetrate the Fox News fog. We told ourselves that at least six justices, and maybe even seven, of the most MAGA-friendly court in history would still want to ensure that this November’s elections would not be the last in history. Political hacks they may be, but they were not lawless ones.

On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States , the Republican-appointed justices shattered those illusions. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so. These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act. These justices fear that it is Trump’s prosecution for election subversion that will “destabilize” democracy, requiring them to read a brand-new principle of presidential immunity into a Constitution that guarantees nothing of the sort. They evinced virtually no concern for our ability to continue holding free and fair elections that culminate in a peaceful transfer of power. They instead offered endless solicitude for the former president who fought that transfer of power.

However the court disposes of Trump v. U.S. , the result will almost certainly be precisely what the former president craves: more delays, more hearings, more appeals—more of everything but justice . This was not a legitimate claim from the start, but a wild attempt by Trump’s attorneys to use his former role as chief executive of the United States to shield himself from the consequences of trying to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. After so much speculation that these reasonable, rational jurists would surely dispose of this ridiculous case quickly and easily, Thursday delivered a morass of bad-faith hand-wringing on the right about the apparently unbearable possibility that a president might no longer be allowed to wield his powers of office in pursuit of illegal ends. Just as bad, we heard a constant minimization of Jan. 6, for the second week in a row , as if the insurrection were ancient history, and history that has since been dramatically overblown, presumably for Democrats’ partisan aims.

We got an early taste of this minimization in Trump v. Anderson , the Colorado case about removing Trump from the ballot. The court didn’t have the stomach to discuss the violence at the Capitol in its sharply divided decision, which found for Trump ; indeed, the majority barely mentioned the events of Jan. 6 at all when rejecting Colorado’s effort to bar from the ballot an insurrectionist who tried to steal our democracy. But we let that one be, because we figured special counsel Jack Smith would ride to the rescue. Smith has indicted Trump on election subversion charges related to Jan. 6, and the biggest obstacle standing between the special counsel and a trial has been the former president’s outlandish claim that he has absolute immunity from criminal charges as a result of his having been president at the time. Specifically, Trump alleges that his crusade to overturn the election constituted “official acts” that are immune from criminal liability under a heretofore unknown constitutional principle that the chief executive is quite literally above the law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in February that the president does not have blanket or absolute immunity for all actions taken in office, including “official” acts performed under the guise of executing the law (for example, Trump’s attempt to weaponize the DOJ against election results under the pretense of investigating fraud). The D.C. Circuit’s emphatic, cross-ideological decision should have been summarily affirmed by SCOTUS within days. Instead, the justices set it for arguments two months down the road—a bad omen, to put it mildly . Even then, many court watchers held out hope that Thursday morning’s oral arguments were to be the moment for the nine justices of the Supreme Court to finally indicate their readiness to take on Trump, Trumpism, illiberalism, and slouching fascism.

It was not to be. Justice Samuel Alito best captured the spirit of arguments when he asked gravely “what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society” (good start!), then answered his own question: total immunity for criminal presidents (oh, dear). Indeed, anything but immunity would, he suggested, encourage presidents to commit more crimes to stay in office: “Now, if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” Never mind that the president in question did not leave office peacefully and is not sitting quietly in retirement but is instead running for presidential office once again. No, if we want criminal presidents to leave office when they lose, we have to let them commit crimes scot-free. If ever a better articulation of the legal principle “Don’t make me hit you again” has been proffered at an oral argument, it’s hard to imagine it.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke to this absurdity when she responded in what could only be heard as a cri de coeur: “Stable democratic society needs good faith of public officials,” she said. “That good faith assumes that they will follow the law.” The justice noted that despite all the protections in place, a democracy can sometimes “potentially fail.” She concluded: “In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we destroyed our democracy on our own, isn’t it?”

But it was probably too late to make this plea, because by that point we had heard both Alito and Gorsuch opine that presidents must be protected at all costs from the whims of overzealous deep state prosecutors brandishing “vague” criminal statutes. We heard Kavanaugh opine mindlessly on the independent counsel statute and how mean it is to presidents, reading extensively from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in a case arguing that independent counsels are unconstitutional. (Yes, Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr , the independent counsel.) If you’re clocking a trend here, it’s gender. Just as was the case in Anderson , it’s the women justices doing the second-shift work here: both probing the thorny constitutional and criminal questions and signaling a refusal to tank democracy over abstractions and deflections. As was the case in the EMTALA arguments, it’s the women who understand what it looks like to cheat death.

Is the president, Sotomayor asked, immune from prosecution if he orders the military to assassinate a political rival? Yes, said John Sauer, who represented Trump—though it “depends on the circumstances.” Could the president, Justice Elena Kagan asked, order the military to stage a coup? Yes, Sauer said again, depending on the circumstances. To which Kagan tartly replied that Sauer’s insistence on specifying the “circumstances” boiled down to “Under my test, it’s an official act, but that sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” (Cue polite laughter in the chamber.)

This shameless, maximalist approach should have drawn anger from the conservative justices—indignation, at least, that Sauer took them for such easy marks. But it turns out that he calibrated his terrible arguments just right. The cynicism on display was truly breathtaking: Alito winkingly implied to Michael Dreeben, representing Smith, that we all know that Justice Department lawyers are political hacks, right? Roberts mocked Dreeben for saying “There’s no reason to worry because the prosecutor will act in good faith.”

The conservative justices are so in love with their own voices and so convinced of their own rectitude that they monologued about how improper it was for Dreeben to keep talking about the facts of this case, as opposed to the “abstract” principles at play. “I’m talking about the future!” Kavanaugh declared at one point to Dreeben, pitching himself not as Trump’s human shield but as a principled defender of the treasured constitutional right of all presidents to do crime. (We’re sure whatever rule he cooks up will apply equally to Democratic presidents, right?) Kavanaugh eventually landed on the proposition that prosecutors may charge presidents only under criminal statutes that explicitly state they can be applied to the president. Which, as Sotomayor pointed out, would mean no charges everywhere, because just a tiny handful of statutes are stamped with the label “CAN BE APPLIED TO PRESIDENT.”

The words bold and fearless action were repeated on a loop today, as a kind of mantra of how effective presidents must be free to act quickly and decisively to save democracy from the many unanticipated threats it faces. And yet the court—which has been asked to take bold and fearless action to deter the person who called Georgia’s secretary of state to demand that he alter the vote count, and threatened to fire DOJ officials who would not help steal an election—is backing away from its own duty. The prospect of a criminal trial for a criminal president shocked and appalled five men: Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch suggested that Smith’s entire prosecution is unconstitutional; meanwhile, Roberts sounded eager at times to handle the case just a hair more gracefully: by cutting out its heart by preventing the jury from hearing about “official acts” (which lie at the center of the alleged conspiracy). Justice Amy Coney Barrett was far more measured, teasing out a compromise with Dreeben that would compel the trial court to tell the jury it could not impose criminal liability for these “official” acts, only “private ones.” Remember, drawing that line would require months of hearings and appeals, pushing any trial into 2025 or beyond. The president who tried to steal the most recent election is running in the next one, which is happening in mere months.

The liberal justices tried their best to make the case that justice required denying Trump’s sweeping immunity claim, permitting the trial to move forward, and sorting out lingering constitutional issues afterward, as virtually all other criminal defendants must do. They got little traction. Everyone on that bench was well aware that the entire nation was listening to arguments; that the whole nation wants to understand whether Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election was an existential threat to democracy or a lark. Five justices sent the message, loud and clear, that they are far more worried about Trump’s prosecution at the hands of the deep-state DOJ than about his alleged crimes, which were barely mentioned. This trial will almost certainly face yet more delays. These delays might mean that its subject could win back the presidency in the meantime and render the trial moot. But the court has now signaled that nothing he did was all that serious and that the danger he may pose is not worth reining in. The real threats they see are the ones Trump himself shouts from the rooftops: witch hunts and partisan Biden prosecutors. These men have picked their team. The rest hardly matters.

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‘Where’s Cricket?’ Don’t Ask. Kristi Noem Defends Killing Her Dog.

In a forthcoming book, the South Dakota governor, seen as a potential vice-presidential pick, tells of shooting her hunting dog. And a goat.

By Anjali Huynh

• April 26, 2024

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Friday defended a story included in her forthcoming biography in which she describes killing a family dog on their farm, to her daughter’s distress — a grisly anecdote that instantly drew criticism from a number of political opponents.

Ms. Noem, a Republican who is widely seen as a contender to be former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, shared details about shooting the 14-month-old dog, a female wirehaired pointer named Cricket, and an unnamed goat, according to excerpts first reported by The Guardian .

An avid hunter, Ms. Noem wrote that she had hoped to train Cricket to hunt pheasant, but that she proved “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless” as a hunting dog. “I hated that dog,” Ms. Noem wrote, according to The Guardian.

It was after Cricket ruined a hunting trip, killed another family’s chickens and bit the governor that Ms. Noem recalled deciding to kill the dog; she shot Cricket in a gravel pit.

That was not the only blood Ms. Noem drew that day: She also shot a male goat that she called “nasty and mean.” Shot him twice, in fact: The goat jumped as she shot him the first time, according to The Guardian’s recounting of the book, so she fetched another shell and shot him again.

The whole ordeal was reportedly witnessed by a construction crew nearby. Ms. Noem wrote that as the workers returned to their jobs, a school bus came by to drop off her children.

Her daughter, Kennedy, Ms. Noem wrote, “looked around confused” and asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

“I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn’t tell the story here,” Ms. Noem wrote in the book, set to be published by Center Street on May 7. But she framed the day’s events as reflecting her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly,” whether that be in farm ownership or in politics.

The story drew condemnation on Friday from a swath of the political world, mainly to Ms. Noem’s left, including some anti-Trump Republicans and a number of Democrats. President Biden’s re-election campaign wrote on X that “Trump VP contender Kristi Noem brags about shooting her 14-month-old puppy to death.” And the Democratic National Committee issued a statement describing the passages as “disturbing and horrifying.”

Ms. Noem seized on The Guardian’s article to underscore her rural-America bona fides, promote her book and mock the news media. “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she wrote Friday on X , adding that her family recently had to “put down” three horses.

She added that her book would contain “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.”

Ms. Noem, who appeared with Mr. Trump at an event in Ohio last month, is one of several Republicans regularly mentioned as potential vice-presidential picks . At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February , she tied with Vivek Ramaswamy for first place in a poll of whom attendees wanted to see Mr. Trump select as a running mate.

She has routinely praised the former president and recently took part in an ad promoting her cosmetic dental work that some saw as a move to catch Mr. Trump’s attention , even as it drew legal scrutiny . In recent days, she has refused to say whether she would have certified the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, and dodged questions on whether she supported exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape or incest.

Anjali Huynh , a member of the 2023-24 Times Fellowship class based in New York, covers national politics, the 2024 presidential campaign and other elections. More about Anjali Huynh

A Closer Look at Man’s Best Friend

Dogs are more than just pets, they’re our companions..

How exactly did dogs take over our world? A writer spent a week in the world of luxury dog “hotels”  to find out.

Small dogs with prominent noses live longer than bigger, flat-faced canines,  a new study suggests.

Longevity drugs for our canine companions are moving closer to reality. Here is what to know .

Can your dog make you sick? While dog lovers cherish their pets’ affection, their licks and nips can potentially spread harmful germs .

How do you handle an aggressive dog? Trainers weighed in on how owners can help pets keep their cool .

DogTV, a pay-TV service designed for dogs who are stuck at home alone, hopes to tap into a huge new audience of pandemic puppies  — plus their owners.

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Conservatives condemn Kristi Noem for ‘twisted’ admission of killing dog

Revelation in new book that possible Trump running mate killed ‘untrainable’ hunting dog prompts widespread revulsion

Conservative pundits have condemned the South Dakota governor and possible Trump running mate Kristi Noem, amid widespread horror over her admission in a new book that she killed both an “untrainable” dog and an unruly goat during a single day in hunting season.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump White House staffer turned critic, said : “I’m a dog lover and I am honestly horrified by the Kristi Noem excerpt. I wish I hadn’t even read it. A 14-month-old dog is still a puppy and can be trained. A large part of bad behaviour in dogs is not having proper training from humans.

“Dogs are a gift from God. They’re a reflection of his unconditional love. Anyone who would needlessly hurt an animal because they are inconvenient needs help.”

The Guardian revealed Noem’s story, which is contained in a book out next month. In No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem describes her frustrations with Cricket, a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer who Noem says ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbouring family’s chickens.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, saying Cricket was “untrainable … dangerous” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem describes taking Cricket to a gravel pit on her farm and shooting her. Remarkably, Noem then describes how she also chose to kill an unruly, unnamed, un-castrated goat, first botching the job, then finishing the animal off with a third shotgun shell.

The news roiled the race to be named running mate to Donald Trump , the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, of whom Noem is an ardent supporter.

Sarah Matthews, another Trump aide turned opponent, said : “When I saw tweets about Kristi Noem murdering her puppy, I thought to myself, ‘Damn, one of the other VP contenders’ teams found some oppo,’ until I realized SHE wrote about it in HER book.

“I’m not sure why anyone would brag about this unless they’re sick and twisted.”

Rachel Bade, senior Washington correspondent for Politico, said : “Not sure who advised Kristi Noem that it was a good idea to boast about killing her 14-month-old puppy but I’m willing to bet this would be a big problem for her if she [were] chosen for VP. Makes [2012 presidential nominee Mitt] Romney’s dog-on-the-car-roof story look quaint.”

Meghan McCain, a pundit whose father, the late Arizona Republican senator John McCain, made one of the most famous running mate selections in history when he chose the extremist Sarah Palin in 2008, wrote on X: “You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc. But not from killing a dog.

“All I will distinctly think about Kristi Noem now is that she murdered a puppy who was ‘acting up’ – which is obviously cruel and insane. Good luck with that VP pick[,] lady.”

Noem responded by doubling down.

“We love animals,” she said , “but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

The governor also promised “more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping”.

But in political and media circles, most gasps were of horror – alongside mourning for Cricket and the unnamed goat.

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign seized on the story, tweeting pictures of the president and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, happily interacting with dogs. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, called Noem’s words “truly disturbing and horrifying”.

“Our message is plain and simple,” the DNC said. “If you want elected officials who don’t brag about brutally killing their pets as part of their self-promotional book tour, then listen to our owners – and vote Democrat.”

Dan Lussen, a hunting-dog trainer, told Rolling Stone a 14-month-old dog was a “baby that doesn’t know any better”, adding that unruly dogs were the result of a lack of guidance, training or discipline by the owner.

The pressure group Peta – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – said: “Most Americans love their dogs, and we suspect that they will consider Governor Noem a psychotic loony for letting this rambunctious puppy loose on chickens and then punishing her by deciding to personally blow her brains out rather than attempting to train her or find a more responsible guardian who would provide her with a proper home.

“Governor Noem obviously fails to understand the vital political concepts of education, cooperation, compromise and compassion.”

Celebrity dog lovers joined the condemnation.

The actor Mark Hamill, best known as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, posted a picture with his two dogs and said: “Despising animal cruelty should be bipartisan.”

Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, addressed Noem directly : “You are so full of shit it’s not even funny. You just couldn’t be bothered to train that puppy. And if [s]he truly couldn’t be a birddog, I am quite sure [s]he would have been a great pet for a family that didn’t need to shoot birds to give [her] something to do. #psychopath.”

Back in politics, Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative, called Noem “deliberately cruel” and “trash”. Later, the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump group Wilson co-founded, released a short video ad .

Over scenes of dogs looking lovable but acting rambunctiously, a solemn voice said: “Dog owners know our furry friends can be a lot to keep up with.

“But when those tough moments come, you have options. Shooting your dog in the face should not be one of them. And if you do happen to shoot your dog in the face, please, don’t write about it in your autobiography.

“This has been a public service announcement directed at any Republican who may be considering murdering their dog.”

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PEN America Cancels 2024 World Voices Festival Amid Further Fallout

Less than a week after canceling its 2024 Literary Awards ceremony  following months of  steadily mounting criticism  over the organization's response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, PEN America has also canceled what would have been the 20th edition of its World Voices Festival . Both cancellations were made in the wake of a series of withdrawals from awards consideration—along with award refusals, in the case of World Voices cofounder Esther Allen —and from participation in the festival by an unprecedented number of authors.

The organization's third tentpole spring event, the PEN America Literary Gala, is currently slated to proceed as planned on May 16. A representative of PEN America also confirmed that the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and PEN Open Book Award—which were to be announced on a different, as-yet-unannounced timeline  from the now-canceled awards ceremony—are also still proceeding as planned.

In recent weeks, PEN America's leadership has made some efforts to reconcile with its critics, including  committing to conduct a "review" of PEN’s work  "going back a decade." Moreoever, in the recent release announcing the cancellation of World Voices , PEN America’s chief officer of literary programming, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, pledged to host a town hall in the near future "to create a space to wrestle with the issues gripping the literary community and our own organization."

Stille, those efforts at reconciliation came even as PEN America continued to push back against those same critics. “We greatly respect those writers who have followed their consciences," Rosaz Shariyf said in a statement included in the release, "and stand with those who felt compelled to this decision by virtue of the pressures they faced.” 

In her own statement from the release, PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel—who has been specifically mentioned in much of the criticism of the organization, especially of late —characterized recent critique as "a campaign that casts our struggle to reflect complexity, uphold our identity as a big tent organization, and show fealty to our principles as a moral abdication." She added: "The perspective that engaging with those who hold a different point of view constitutes an impermissible act of legitimization negates the very possibility of dialogue. It also betrays the essence of PEN’s charter and mission to dispel hatreds and engage writers and literature as a catalyst for empathy and a bridge toward common ground.” 

On Friday, PEN America also  shared on X (formerly Twitter) a thread paraphrasing an article in the Atlantic , written by Gal Beckerman, which characterized the recent criticism of the organization as being rooted in "a sense of righteousness that is impossible to contain within an organization built on the 'right to disagree'" and described PEN as "an organization that sees itself as above politics." In response to the thread, some writers on X pointed to the organization's stated commitment to human rights, advocacy for Ukraine amid Russia's invasion, and criticism of book banning in the U.S. as examples of its political involvements.

A  sympathetic op-ed in the  New York Times , written by former  New York Times Book Review  editor Pamela Paul, also prompted a response further indicating divisions in the literary world over how literary organizations should address issues related to the war in Gaza. After Paul called, in the piece, the website  Literary Hub  "the de facto clearinghouse for  pro-Palestinian  literary-world sentiment," Dan Sheehan, the editor-in-chief of  Lit Hub  vertical  Book Marks  and currently the site's lead writer on issues related to Israel and Palestine, joked on X that Lit Hub   might produce a tote bag  touting that characterization.

A number of authors and organizations that have criticized PEN America, meanwhile, have begun planning programming of their own. On May 7 at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan, the Palestine Festival of Literature , Writers Against the War on Gaza , and  Amplify Palestine  will hold an event, " Freedom to Write for Palestine ," featuring some of the writers who have withdrawn from PEN America's now-canceled programming. The event will raise funds for the Palestinian nonprofit We Are Not Numbers .

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