8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year

Leave a Comment / A Catch-All /

Neil Pasricha’s article in the Harvard Business Review has eight great suggestions on time management and organization:

  1. Centralize reading in your home,
  2. Make a public commitment,
  3. Find a few trusted lists,
  4. Change your mindset about quitting,
  5. Channel your reading dollars,
  6. Triple your churn rate,
  7. Read physical books, and
  8. Reapply the 10,000 steps rule.

The article, of course, expands on these points with explanations and ideas for practical application. Be forewarned, however, that the Harvard Business Review limits the number of articles you can view for free, so if you’ve already exhausted that, you may not be able to access the link.

Study Guide to Wheelock’s Latin by Dale A. Grote

Leave a Comment / Dale A. Grote, Study Guide to Wheelock's Latin /

Digging around for my old Latin resources, I was relieved to find that the Study Guide to Wheelock’s Latin by Dale A. Grote was still freely available online. As we all know, however, when it comes to the InterWebs, too often “One day you’re in and the next day you’re OUT!” Well, Professor Grote already thought of that:

“I call the guides ‘Study Guide to Wheelock,’ and have made them available for free use to anyone who’d like use them. […] So far as I’m concerned they can be copied and sent anywhere.”

Taking this literally, I downloaded the HTML files and have uploaded them here. I did do some editing to update the pages in the original .ZIP file: The URL for Professor Grote’s page at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte had changed, as well as his email address.

It’s always best to go to the original page. But just in case that ever disappears, we’ve got a backup.

Update 19 February 2017: I’ve found another page for Professor Grote’s notes on Wheelock which includes an update from him.

How to Study Wheelock’s Latin

Leave a Comment / Foreign Language, Frederic M. Wheelock, Getting Organized, Richard A. LaFleur, Self-Education, Tips & Tricks, Wheelock's Latin, Wheelock's Latin /

Wheelock's Latin, 7th EditionWhy study Latin — or any language for that matter? For one, I’m lately finding several things I would like to read but have not been translated into English. Further, I’m becoming more cynical about translations in general — you really are at the mercy of the translator when it comes to interpretation. And language study in general is brain training.

As for Latin specifically: If you have even a basic knowledge of Latin, you will most likely be able to decipher the meaning of almost any word in any language, with a few exceptions.

Want to study Latin, but don’t know where to start? One of THE Latin texts is Wheelock’s Latin, in its seventh edition as of this writing. Just reading the text and doing the exercises is not, as you will soon discover, sufficient. This list is compiled from several sources, including the Wheelock’s FAQ from the Latin Study list and the discussion there.

  1. Read the chapter in Wheelock’s Latin.
  2. If you need to brush up on some of the grammar, do the appropriate lessons in English Grammar for Students of Latin (EGSL) by Norma W. Goldman.
  3. Practice the vocabulary. If you want to use flashcards, you can make up your own or you can buy them (Vocabulary Cards and Grammatical Forms Summary for Wheelock’s Latin by Richard A. LaFleur).
  4. Practice the pronunciations.
  5. Read the chapter in A Comprehensive Guide to Wheelock’s Latin (CGWL) by Dale A. Grote and do the exercises.
  6. Do the Self-Tutorial exercises in the back of Wheelock’s Latin.
  7. Do the Exercitationes (EX) exercises in Wheelock’s Latin.
  8. Do the Sententiae Antiquae (SA) in Wheelock’s Latin.
  9. Do the translations (TR) in Wheelock’s Latin.
  10. Do the chapter in 38 Latin Stories by Anne H. Groton and James M. May (G&M) OR
  11. Do the chapter in Scribblers, Sculptors, and Scribes by Richard A. LaFleur (SSS).
  12. Do the exercises in the Workbook for Wheelock’s Latin.

The Cornell Note-Taking System

Leave a Comment / Documents, Documents and Logs, Media, Self-Education /

The Cornell Note-Taking System isn’t for everyone, or for every book — it’s actually designed for lecture notes — but it is extremely useful in the right setting. I created this template several years ago for my son to use and he found it quite beneficial for most of his work. I’ve found it quite useful myself.

It’s an .ODT document, so you can edit it to suit your needs, including saving it as a true template. The header for the pages is contained in the Properties > Description > Title dialog. This makes them easy to find in the Explorer window if you want to sort them by title. This works for Windows computers — I have no way to test it on other systems.

The Cornell Learning Strategies Center offers a pdf document which summarizes the note-taking system.

LibraryThing

Leave a Comment / Getting Organized, Tips & Tricks /

LibraryThingLibraryThing claims on their about page that it is “an online service to help people catalog their books easily.” There’s a lot more going on than that — so much so that you can get lost for hours just exploring the site.

I like LibraryThing and signed up to be a lifetime member almost immediately. It’s still only $25! Can’t beat a deal like that!