Reading Mindfully: Willa Cather’s “On the Gulls’ Road”

Reading Mindfully: Willa Cather’s “On the Gulls’ Road”

American author Willa Cather’s novels evoke the landscapes of the American west, from the plains of Nebraska to Colorado’s Mesa Verde, and they depict frontier life in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though she is primarily known for longer works such as My Ántonia, O Pioneers, and The Song of the Lark, Cather began her career as a poet and writer of short stories, and published many of them throughout her life.

“On the Gulls’ Road” (1908) takes place at sea rather than in the American west. Nonetheless, Cather’s short story attends to landscape and seascape, as well as the relationships between people, in a manner similar to her better-known works.

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Reading Mindfully: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited”

Reading Mindfully: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited”

Most of us know F. Scott Fitzgerald as the author of The Great Gatsby—that canonical text, ubiquitous in high school English classes and revisited in a recent film version. But the American author wrote a number of other works—haunting, evocative novels like Tender is the Night, as well as a few collections of short stories.

First published in 1931 in The Saturday Evening Post, “Babylon Revisited” follows the main character, Charlie, as he tries to regain custody of his daughter.

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Reading Mindfully: Leo Tolstoy’s “Three Questions”

Reading Mindfully: Leo Tolstoy’s “Three Questions”

Leo Tolstoy, the nineteenth-century Russian author, is best known for Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Both novels are massive, brick-like tomes. But Tolstoy wrote accessible short stories, too. “The Three Questions” was published in 1885, as part of a larger collection.

“Three Questions” begins with a king and his desire to do right—or, at least, to avoid failure.

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Reading Mindfully: Wendell Berry’s Poetry

Reading Mindfully: Wendell Berry’s Poetry

April in the United States is National Poetry Month, and so it seems appropriate, as we read mindfully once again, to turn to a poet whose work emphasizes the relationship between the natural world and our deepest selves. A fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and winner of the National Humanities Medal, Wendell Berry is a prolific writer of prose—fiction and nonfiction—and poetry.

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Reading Mindfully: Chekhov’s “The Princess”

Reading Mindfully: Chekhov’s “The Princess”

Based on the success of our eighteen-day initiative earlier this year, we launch our monthly mindful reading series as a springboard to think about, and to practice, compassion, empathy, and awareness—of ourselves and of the world we live in. Reading mindfully allows us a few quiet minutes in the day to focus on something different, something literary or artful. Won’t you join us this week, and share your thoughts and reactions to Anton Chekhov’s short story, “The Princess”?

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Why We Are Still Reading Mindfully

Why We Are Still Reading Mindfully

In January, we experimented with something new. We at Books@Work and a number of volunteers who subscribed for this special series undertook to read a story, an essay or a poem every day for about three weeks. Intended as a springboard to think about mindfulness and to practice compassion, empathy and awareness (of ourselves and of the world we live in) the readings enabled—if nothing else—a few quiet minutes in the day to focus on something different, something literary or artful. Reading mindfully, we hypothesized, might be a way to decompress and engage our minds, with thought and deliberation. Here are our observations, plus a sampling of what we read.

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Reading for Mindfulness

Reading for Mindfulness

In cultivating compassion, empathy and an appreciation for the world, mindfulness practice powerfully overlaps with the benefits of reading. After all, a New School Study recently demonstrated that reading – especially literary fiction – makes readers more empathetic. Reading deeply requires for a moment that we enter into another person’s head, and when we read fiction we enter the minds of characters who are often vastly different from ourselves. Learning about another’s perspective or point of view has the potential to profoundly shape us and our interactions with the world. Reading, in this sense, is an opportunity to practice deep and compassionate listening.

We are so convinced of the parallels between reading and sharing a great text and mindfulness practice, that we invite you to share an experiment with us. Participating in a mindfulness seminar or meditating every morning are not the only ways to focus on the moment, engage in compassion and connect with the beauty of the world. You can also read – and you can read with us.

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