Week 8 Reading Diary

In the instructions, it is suggested that you write three or four paragraphs summing up your thoughts or make a list of bullet points describing a character or situation. I haven’t been doing this. Part of the reason why I haven’t is that when I started, I didn’t know what was noteworthy and what wasn’t. Also, at the beginning, I didn’t find much to comment on. The Reading Guides covered the big things and the little observations I made would be hard to organize into paragraphs. I take notes as I read and include quotes that stand out to me. I then publish these notes. They feel somewhat disorganized as I read over them, but I feel like that would be a little different if I covered the plot in my notes.

When I went to review my Reading Diary posts, I started with week 2 and moved closer to the present. The first thing I noticed was that I took a lot more notes at the beginning than at the end. The second thing I noticed was that many of the things I took note of at the beginning don’t really seem to matter now. Either I took note of something that was completely irrelevant (it had no effect on the story, its meaning, or my perception of the culture) or something that became so obvious and important later in the story that I didn’t need to take not of it (example:  “Rama cared about the people of Ayodhya”). I also wrote down more quotes at the beginning, but I think this is because I like Narayan’s storytelling style better. I also took more notes about foreshadowing in the beginning than I have lately; this may be because of Narayan’s storytelling style, too. The first week I didn’t add any page numbers. I wish I had. Starting week three, I gave page numbers with quotes, but not general notes. I continued to do this in most posts that followed. I wish I had given page numbers for each observation. I remember that when I wrote many of these notes, I would compare them to the Reading Guides and delete any notes that were just explaining plot. I wish I had thrown in a few notes on the plot so that now when I’m looking for specific stories I have the option to find them without going to the Reading Guide first.

I like the average length of posts I’ve made. I feel like it gives me enough information to relive what I was thinking, but not too much to weed through. I do need to start making bullet points or putting a space between notes. Sometimes just glancing over it can be hard to distinguish whether it’s a new note or the continuation of a note.

Sometimes I use my diary posts to write my storytelling post. I don’t really use them for much more. This past week I consulted my diary posts to try to find stories about the vahanas and they did not help me at all (I should probably start noting when I find a vahana story in my reading diaries).

I guess I’ve been doing okay with the reading assignments. I’ve gotten all of them done. Some are harder than others because I’m tired or that section of the book isn’t the most interesting, etc. Like in other classes, I’m really good at getting a gist for what the reading says. I’d retain more information if I listened to someone tell me the story.