{"id":503,"date":"2014-05-23T14:32:48","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T14:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/?p=503"},"modified":"2014-05-23T14:32:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T14:32:48","slug":"morning-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/morning-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Reads"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are morning reads and there are other reads. Other reads can be read in the morning, but morning reads don’t want to be experienced except in the early hours of the day when your mind is freshest, most philosophical and most optimistic. Preferably also you have a cup of coffee in hand and a block of uninterrupted time set aside.<\/p>\n

“A Place of My Own” by Michael Pollan has been my morning read for the last couple months. I take in only a handful of pages at each sitting — this is all you need of a morning read. The book is the story of Pollan building himself a writing house in the woods of his large property in Connecticut. But also, says Pollan, it “looks at the art of architecture and the work of building through the lens of nature.” It’s no simple telling of the steps of drawing blueprints to framing to roofing. “A Place of My Own” ponders why we build shelters, why we use cedar for shingles, why architects and carpenters don’t love each other, why Pollan feels the need to get his own hands dirty instead of just hiring the work out. There are digressions about the challenges of designing inswinging windows, the limits of modernist architectural styles, and how trim around a window is like a transitional phrase in a narrative. The book is a building of words as much as words about a building.<\/p>\n

I tried to read “A Place of My Own” in the evening once and it went nowhere. My late-day mind kept skimming over sentences that included words like declension, belvedere, and fenestration. And when Pollan began to talk of “Modernism’s program of psychological hygiene” I was done for. These are things I might care to read about in the morning, only in the morning. I do my learning and my philosophizing best in the morning — I do my writing in the morning. The rest of the day I do my doing.<\/p>\n

Yet thank God for morning reads because when you need deliberately chosen words, attempts at creative narrative structure, and deep thinking, you need them. You need a Pollan to have written “A Place of My Own.”<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are morning reads and there are other reads. Other reads can be read in the morning, but morning reads don’t want to be experienced except in the early hours of the day when your mind is freshest, most philosophical and most optimistic. Preferably also you have a cup of coffee in hand and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8huLi-87","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":403,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/so-smart-were-stupid\/","url_meta":{"origin":503,"position":0},"title":"So Smart We’re Stupid?","author":"Greg Alder","date":"May 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"We may have come full circle in our intelligence in America: We\u2019ve become so smart that we\u2019re stupid; we\u2019ve learned so many new things that we no longer remember the most basic and important things. I was listening to an interview on NPR's Science Friday with the writer Michael Pollan,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/so-smart-were-stupid\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"At school, the students raised these pigs and then slaughtered and cooked them up.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/IMG_2690-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":241,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/goodreads\/","url_meta":{"origin":503,"position":1},"title":"Goodreads","author":"Greg Alder","date":"April 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Have you ever thought of Goodreads bookshelves as a window into your mind? Do you do Goodreads? I've found that it can be a useful place for discovering new authors who write in genres you like. And you can keep track of authors you already read. For example, when I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":308,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/the-mountain-school-at-barnes-and-noble\/","url_meta":{"origin":503,"position":2},"title":"“The Mountain School” at Barnes and Noble","author":"Greg Alder","date":"March 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Mountain School is now available at Barnes and Noble, \"the world's largest bookseller,\"\u00a0by clicking here. It can be purchased in both print and as\u00a0a NOOK Book; my grandfather reads on a NOOK, so this one's for you, Grandpa!","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":536,"url":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/south-africa-postal-workers-strike\/","url_meta":{"origin":503,"position":3},"title":"South Africa postal workers strike","author":"Greg Alder","date":"November 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Never imagined I'd be affected by one of the many strikes that are constantly happening in South Africa, but now a box of my books (\"The Mountain School\") are in limbo in a warehouse somewhere, part of the \"mountain of mail\" that the South African Post Office says they're sitting\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregalder.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}