Since most of you probably like to read and/or care about the state of your brain as a thinking mechanism, I thought I’d share some reading/brain exercises I read about in Making a Good Brain Great.
LAZY-8S
How to do it: Extend one arm in front of your face. With your thumb pointing upward, slowly and smoothly trace a large figure 8 on its side in the air. Keep your neck relaxed and your head upright, moving only slightly as you focus on the thumb and follow it around. This reportedly helps with reading, speed reading, writing, and hand-eye coordination.
CROSS CRAWL
How to do it: While standing, alternately touch your left knee with your right hand, then your right knee with your left hand. Continue for 10 to 15 repetitions. This reportedly helps with reading, writing, listening, memory, and coordination. It activates both sides of the brain simultaneously.
The first one makes more sense to me as a reading aid, because it’s giving your eyes a workout. I also read about a similar exercise to the Lazy-8s in Men’s Health. In this one, you hold your hand out at arm’s length and point your index finger up, while keeping the tip of your finger at eye level. Focus on the tip of your index finger, then shift focus to something behind your finger without moving your head. For instance, you could stand in one room and shift your focus to a lamp that’s in an adjacent room (that’s what I do). Do the exercise ten times.
On another note, I was reading something about speed reading, and it said that one reason people sometimes read slowly is because they subvocalize everything they read. (And by subvocalize, I mean silently, in their head; not with the moving lips.)
When I read that, it was like a light went off. That’s exactly what I do, and that’s probably why I can’t seem to read any faster than I do. In order to break yourself of this habit, the text said to count to ten in increments of two (2, 4, 6, 8, 10), and do that over and over as you’re reading. While you’re doing this, you’re supposed to read extra slowly as you’re training your brain to process the words differently.
I don’t think I’m ever going to break myself of the habit (and I probably won’t really try as it seems impossible), but it does explain to me why some people can read a whole book in a 2-3 hours, while it takes me much longer. But I also read that people who subvocalize often require a quiet and distraction-free zone to read in, and that’s definitely true of me. So that also explains why some people can sit and read in a noisy restaurant (or while listening to the radio, as Gordon does), while I find any kind of noise or talking very distracting. Of course, reading the way I do means I’m a more careful reader than some others, and so that’s good for editing, at least.
Read More
If this book only contained Finlay’s brilliant Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated reinvention of space opera, “The Political Officer,” it would be worth buying for that story alone. But fortunately, the book’s also got thirteen other compelling and finely-crafted tales, which run the gamut from humor to alternate history to swords-and-sorcery. This variety makes for an interesting reading experience, as if Finlay wanted to take the reader on a tour through all of what science fiction and fantasy has to offer. And Finlay seems equally adept at each of the subgenres he explores, so it’s not a matter of him trying new things until he finds something that works; it’s more like having written a great story in one subgenre, he goes looking for new kingdoms to conquer.