> I remember vividly the nights I spent with his book on the left side and English dictionary on the right one. Underlining and writing words and page numbers of words I coulnd't find just to return to them later when context would be much cleaner. Ever so funny struggle with idioms and cultural references I couldn't possibly understand. There was no internet to look that stuff up.
I salute your perseverance and skill - that's incredible.
We take for granted how easily we now obtain the information and literature we want today (tailored to our preferences at that!) thanks to the internet.
In some ways I feel we had to use our brains more before technology and data became so universal and cheap!
> In some ways I feel we had to use our brains more before technology and data became so universal and cheap!
Maybe. Funny thing is, we have more opportunity to use our brains better now, and yet it seems we're not taking it.
For instance, books. Many people say that they don't read much books anymore - even though today you have access to much better selection of books than before. Issues like being an adult = lots of bullshit errands aside, it's easy to be distracted by blogs and other short-form texts today. I have to constantly remind myself to keep reading actual books. Today you can literally just Google "best book on X", browse several discussion threads and pick out what is possibly the best resource whole humanity has on topic X. It's that easy. But for some reason, it's not an obvious thing to do. It wasn't for me until recently.
I salute your perseverance and skill - that's incredible.
We take for granted how easily we now obtain the information and literature we want today (tailored to our preferences at that!) thanks to the internet.
In some ways I feel we had to use our brains more before technology and data became so universal and cheap!