becomingop

Hey guys! How is everyone? I hope everyone is doing great, as I have got a lot to share. I finished my first book in my summer reading challenge a few weeks ago, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who hasn't read it yet. My thoughts can be summed up succinctly and accurately by a review that can be found at the front of the book: "The only negative thing I could ever say about this book is that I'll never again be able to read it for the first time." (Los Angeles Times) As an Asian-American, this book absolutely hit home in a lot of areas for me. I recognized the tiny phoneticized Chinese phrases interspersed throughout the book -they are all phrases I use myself in everyday conversation. All the beliefs and practices in the book, from the description of the scholar’s wife, to the connection one of the mothers has to her zodiac sign, to the scene of the celebration of the Festival of Pure Brightness were things I understoo...

Bill Gates reads 50 books a year. Warren Buffett spends five hours a day reading, and Oprah runs a book club where she shares her favorite book of the month with members. Most people have a vague idea that knowledge is the key to success; yet most people don’t take advantage of one of the oldest ways of acquiring vast amounts of knowledge about nearly anything in a very easy way: reading. Warren Buffett says that the fastest path to success is to read 500 useful pages a day, and in a study of the reading habits of wealthy people, more than 1,200 have reading as a daily habit (from the Huffington Post ). Aside from imitating society’s role models, daily reading has a score of other benefits including vocabulary expansion, memory improvement, and relaxation. For students, reading seems like a cornucopia of rewards. High exposure to reading different types of texts will improve your score on the SAT Verbal section far quicker than simply drilling questions, because the types of que...