Through this course, I was reminded of the guidelines I was first taught at university. I had forgotten so many of them. Somewhere along the way, when work and family became the priority, I laid down the baton of serious reading.

I didn’t realise how long I had been away until I picked it up again in 2017, when I joined an international group of women to read Women Who Run With the Wolves. In that slow, deliberate reading, I fell into deep joy with the book and didn’t want to miss a thing. Hence the flags. So many flags. I was the only one in the group who marked it that way!

Then, in 2025, I briefly lost myself in the “thin gruel” and “sober intoxication” of prominently placed airport books, those easy, glossy, forgettable titles. They filled time, but they did not feed me. I felt bored, no meaning and no sustenance!

This course reminded me that I had not. In a world that skims, scrolls, and moves on, staying radically quiet, making notes in the margin, and lingering with ideas is where the real life of a book happens.

Thank you for refreshing my memory and restoring my confidence in deep, meaningful reading!