Word: book
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...Reece, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, really wants to do is to work for the C.I.A. He finally gets his chance when he is asked to be the driver of the semi-autonomous secret agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta). James has built his career by playing it by the book, and he’s thrown for a loop by the gun-happy, axiom-spitting Charlie. James questions the wisdom behind Charlie’s actions, only to find that Charlie knows what he’s doing. In his role as apprentice-cum-sidekick, James gradually learns more about...
...book by Jonathan R. Cole, The Great American University, refers to the University of Chicago as "our closest approximation to the idea of a great university." Hmm. Cole also traces the history of modern American higher education back to the founding of Johns Hopkins in 1876—not to 1636, which everyone knows is the year when the world officially began spinning on its axis...
Whether it’s an overbearing workload, the death-march pace of classes with gargantuan reading lists, my own lackadaisical demeanor, or books that are three hundred pages too long, I constantly find myself tossing aside several unfinished books each semester. I like to think that I read more carefully and thoughtfully than other students, that it just takes me longer to read a book satisfactorily and that there isn’t enough time to finish everything. But my rationalization often ignores the embarrassing truth...
...usually make a judgment about a book after reading the first chapter; sometimes even the first page. If I don’t find a novel interesting, I generally stop, no matter how distinguished its literary pedigree. I quit reading “Kristin Lavransdatter” (Sigrid Undset’s Nobel-Prize winning historical romance set in 14th century Norway) after the first sentence, “When the earthly goods of Ivar Gjesling the Younger of Sundbu were divided up in the year 1306, his property at Sil was given to his daughter Ragnfrid and her husband...
This phenomenon is hardly unique to me. It has become an epidemic among our generation. Rather than vainly lamenting the trend, it is more pragmatic to analyze it. The most useful critical exercise we can perform is to examine candidly why people stop reading a book rather than focusing on why people start reading books. Usually someone does not stop reading a novel for a sharply-defined ideological reason, but rather because the book failed to engage them. Is it possible sometimes the book is to blame and not the reader? Countless thinkers have offered explanations for this problem...