Reading With The Grandchildren — April 6, 2025

First posted: summer, 2024. Re-posting as a stand-alone, spring, 2025.

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On Reading

I'm having a blast this summer getting back into my reading routine.

Currently reading:

• Jackie Kennedy (second book on Jackie K in past few months)
• Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, Carl Sferrazza Anthony, c. 2023. Amazon.
  
• Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, J. Randy Taraborrelli, c. 2023.  
  
• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
• A Walk on the Wild Side -- Nelson Algren 
  
• Homer: Iliad (now that I'm older, I think the Iliad is a "better" book than the Odyssey
  
• The Greek playwrights: ASE (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides)
• native American history (two books)

I'm absolutely convinced that reading age-appropriate books on the following for the grandsons, age five to twelve, would be superb:

• the Bible (already being accomplished by the parents)
• Homer
• Shakespeare 

By high school, I would add:

• Memoirs of US Grant
• Socrates, Plato, and, Aristotle (SPA)
• the Greek playwrights (ASE)  
  

Literature:

• Catcher in the Rye
• The Great Gatsby 
  

Fine art:

• Romanticism

Architecture:

• Frank Lloyd Wright

I'm struggling with coming up with a good book of the American Revolution. The ones I have are too detailed, don't have quite the flavor I'm looking for.

I'm also looking for a good book on chess. Not one about all the moves, per se, but more of history and philosophy of the game. Hard to articulate. Possibly this one.

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Teaching Reading

Three most important things when teaching children almost any subject:

• consistently and continually put things in context;
• the art of scaffolding; and,
• the techniques of speed reading.

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