Successful Reads

I love to learn, but often find it difficult to fit in as much educational time as I would like. David. S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim have come up with an easy way to easily increase your knowledge. Simply read a page a day from their book The Intellectual Devotional.

Each day of the week is devoted to a specific topic:

• Monday – History
• Tuesday – Literature
• Wednesday – Visual Arts
• Thursday – Science
• Friday – Music
• Saturday – Philosophy
• Sunday – Religion

Of course there will be plenty of topics in the  The Intellectual Devotional that you already know about, but chances are that you will learn something new on that subject. For example, during the first week you’ll learn about…

Monday – Day 1 (History) The Alphabet

Did you know that the Egyptians developed the alphabet as an easy way to communicate with their slaves, and when these slaves eventually migrated back to their home country they took the writing system with them?

Tuesday – Day 2 (Literature) Ulysses by James Joyce

Did you know the novel Ulysses by James Joyce was banned from the United States for nearly twelve years due to the sexual imagery.

Wednesday, Day 3 (Visual Arts) – Lascaux Cave Paintings

The creators of the painters made use of perspective, they painted the figures high on the wall, and a manner that would not be distorted to the viewers below.

Thursday – Day 4 (Science)  Cloning

You’ll read about Dolly the Sheep.  However, did you know that Dolly’s
telomeres (a thin strand of protein at the end of the chromosomes) are the same as the mothers.  A newborn sheep would normally have much longer telomeres.  Telomeres seem to help protect our cells and get thinner as we age. So there could be some truth to all those science fiction stories of clones aging quickly.

Friday – Day 5 (Music) The Basics of Music

I played the Viola for many years so I have some musical background. However, I did learn that in India the musical pitches are chosen from a collection of twenty-two possibilities, and the distance between the steps on a scale are sometimes are larger and sometimes smaller than those used in the Western world.  This makes the differences between the pitches in Indian music very subtle.

Saturday – Day 6 (Philosophy) Appearance and Reality

I learned about a group of philosophers called the Presocratics. While I had heard of each of these philosophers before I didn’t know they believed the world was vastly different from what the experienced.  For example, Thales held the belief that all reality was ultimately composed of water, while Heraclitus believed the world was built from fire.

Sunday – Day 7 (Torah)

Torah scrolls are written in Hebrew by hand. They contain 304,805 letters and make take more than a year to produce. If a single mistake is made, the entire scroll becomes invalid.

I recommend this book for several reasons.

1. It’s a great way to expand your knowledge about a wide variety of subjects.
2. Each day’s reading is a quick read – just one page.
3. The things you learn can be a great way to start a conversation.  This is a lesson I learned from my teenage son.
   can always tell when he has been reading the book as he uses the things he learned to start a conversations with me.  He just revealed to me that one of his major motivations to reading it is to find something interesting to talk about, and interesting ways to start a conversation.  Personally I think that is brilliant, but then I think he is brilliant most of the time.  Interestingly the 2nd and 3rd book in the series uses the words “converse confidently” in the title.

One thing that would have improved the experience for me would be additional illustrations, particularly for the art subjects.  For example, when reading about the Lascaux Cave Paintings it would have been wonderful to have an illustration to look at.

Genre:  Daily Lessons/Devotional
Published by Rodale in 2006.
Hardcover;  364 pages.
List price is $24.00
ISBN: 1-59486-513-2

>>Currently available at Amazon.com for $16.32

Also from David. S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim

• The Intellectual Devotional: American History: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently about Our Nation’s Past (Hardcover)
• The Intellectual Devotional Modern Culture: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently with the Culturati (Hardcover)