The Lonely Good Company Of Books Summary

The Lonely, Good Company of Books by Richard Rodriguez is an excerpt from HUNGER OF MEMORY: THE EDUCATION OF RICHARD RODRIGUEZ by Richard Rodriguez. The Lonely, Good Company of Books was published in 1982. Rodriguez is a Hispanic from San Francisco, California. He struggled with learning to read in English even though both of his parents spoke English and Spanish. Throughout the whole excerpt, Rodriguez talks about his struggles and his efforts in reading books that were tough. He criticizes the school system in the way that it does not help students with reading.

      “A love affair with books” is an article accounting Bernadete Piassa’s life from a young age to her late thirties. She talks about her love for reading and how reading was like a drug to her. Even when she didn’t read for a while she still considered reading an addiction. Nothing could stop her love or passion, not even a language barrier couldn't keep her from the books she loved.

The author’s main purpose in the article was to express the lonely and helpless feelings Richard had when reading alone. He felt dumb and was frustrated until he was introduced to a remedial reading course. Rodriguez expresses his feelings through his childhood story. He knew reading was important and essential to leaning, but reading alone was something he simply could not do effectively.

Welty describes the first steps of reading as “human, but inward...It is to me the voice of the story or poem itself” (Welty 11). Picking up from my knowledge of personification, I gained a new perspective on how books play an impact on how one thinks when reading a piece, as it describes the voice of the book as a human. Having said, this gave me the idea that books establish a personal connection between itself and the reader. Following through with the next chapter, Welty recognizes the value of the summer trips she experienced with her family. She makes an interesting analogy between her trips and reading by calling them “stories. Not only in form, but in their taking on direction, movement, development, change...each trip made its particular revelation, though I could not have found words for it” (68). Connecting this to the title of chapter two, “learning to see” when reading requires looking closely at the small details and soaking it in, in a way that one can look back upon it later. Once one starts to carefully listen and look at the fluidity and rich ingredients a book has, he/she can find their own voice, which leads into the next chapter. Reading spurs imagination which then allows one to explore their own inner being. Welty best describes her encounter of this by explaining “my imagination takes its strength and guides its direction from what

Passion for reading must come from the inner spirit of human being. It is something that cannot be forced into humans. Like Kacper, countless people could not find their passion for reading until they took a book into their hands. Book is a unique power that could impact person’s understanding of the world. It is like a drug, you use it once and you get addicted to it forever. “The library is an ocean of knowledge”. Author’s profound description of the library is a proof of the value he gives to the books. It is the place where he finds a true happiness and peace.

In will Schwalbe’s Why we need to read view, “Reading is the best way to both escape and engage with the world.” When I read a book I feel like all of my problems just go away, like I have found a portle to escape from this world; and that portal for me is reading a book. In middle school I did not have a lot of friends, but when came around I would eat my lunch in one of my closest friends class room. Afterwards I would read my book, I got the attention of a girl; who is now my best friend. We meat because we were interested in the same thing a book.

This article was about the result of a survey that was conducted to 1,765 sixth-grade students in language arts classroom in 23 different schools in northeastern United States. The students were the primary informants about what motivates them to read in their language arts classroom. They concluded that students enjoy independent reading the most in their language arts classroom. The students also enjoy when the teacher does a read aloud. Finally, the main reason why students are motivated to read at school is because they enjoy the quality and diversity of reading material and that the classroom setting and other people do not have the biggest effect on them.

Emilie Buchwald once said, “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” This quote means to me that children learn reading from their parents. People read every day-- from newspapers, blogs, or Facebook posts, to traffic signs. Most people read for escape, entertainment, and instruction. As I consider my reading experiences, I realize they represent the journey I have traveled, leading me to my current academic path.

Francie became literate, and that meant that she had a chance to excel in her education granted that she used this gift properly. Not only did reading give her education, but, “She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimated friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood” (166). In Francie’s school’s magazine, “…the best story written in composition class from each grade was published. Francie’s composition called ‘Winter Time’ had been chosen as the best of the seventh-grade work” (230). Thus, reading affected Francie in a positive way, for her life was boring at first, but now, she always had a pastime and a pathway was paved to her higher education. That being the case, the ability to read is the

Since the dawn of time, humans have learned to communicate through certain writings or stories. Many individuals have benefitted from the gift of reading that we take so much for granted these days. The hunger for knowledge is a basic human instinct that has took place and influenced many people's lives, including mine. But I ask myself these questions. Is knowledge reading, or is reading knowledge? Can reading influence your life choices? Well here I am, thinking back on my childhood clouded by parental disputes and my adventure as a reader and how it has influenced my life today. My reading experiences as a child up to the present have had a great influence on me. My goal in this paper is to take you through a journey of my experiences

During the week of “Launching Independent Reading”, the activities that I participated in during class helped convey and persuade me how reading gives a person so many benefits. For example, when I wrote my childhood book list during class, I had an epiphany. I realized that the books that I read like The Magic Tree House during my childhood created some of the happiest memories that I could remember. These books helped relieve me of my stress and gave me a sense of imagination during my childhood. Those memories made me remember one of the most important and forgotten benefits of reading: entertainment. Another epiphany popped up when I was writing “My Reading Life” essay. While I wrote my essay, I thought, “Wow. I can’t believe how much one

Thesis and Purpose: Books are personal, obsessive, marvelously wonderful. They stir emotions and flicker thoughts in a fashion all their own, and I am convinced that the fragmented world has much less hope for repair if reading becomes an ever minor part of it.

When I look back on my childhood, it is hard for me to identify the specific point in time when literature entered my life. As far as I know, books have always been a friend to me, a retreat from the ordinary and an escape into unlimited worlds of magic. In fact, the earliest memories of my childhood consist of my mother reading such books as The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn and Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman to me in the fading hours of the evening. Due to my mother’s insistence on reading to us, I gained a love for reading at a very young age, a love that was only cultivated with time.

Early in his education, Rodriguez has determined that books are what he needs to read to become educated. He develops this idea from the posters hung on the walls of his classroom by the nuns, “ Open the door to your mind with books. Read the… poster over the nun’s desk in early September. It soon became apparent to me that reading was the classroom’s primary activity” (Rodriguez 542). At this point, Rodriguez knows he should be getting something out of books, but he is not sure what it should be,

In my own life I had once been an avid reader, I would read for hours on end every day after school up until seventh grade. Before seventh grade I knew that I had a connection to the words that the author put down, after each word I would be drawn even deeper into the book than I was before. In those years each trip to the library was a brand new experience, three new books to read and finish in a week before we had to return them: Check. Whole heartedly my obsession with reading was because of my parents. My parents had always stressed the importance reading on me as much as possible. Like Eudora Wealty where as a child she was “ presented with books of her own, which appeared on my birthday and christmas morning” (Wealty, 49), each christmas or birthday that I can remember I received