Tag Archives: assessment

How to assess a book you are reading is worth continuing

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How do you know whether a book is worth reading from beginning to end?

Some people read the first few, say 10 to 20 pages, and then decide to continue or discontinue reading. Others I know read the first few and last few pages, and then choose whether it is worth reading in its entirety. Someone I knew, who was an avid and intelligent reader, told me that if she was finding a book difficult to ‘get into’, she would open the book, and read a few pages somewhere in the middle of the volume, before making a decision. My wife does all three: beginning, end, and a few pages in the middle. What ever method you use to assess the readability of a book is up to you.

In my case, if my attention is grabbed and I have reached the hundredth page, I will read to the end. If not, then I will most probably abandon the book, and move on to another.

PS Most people give up reading Ulysses by James Joyce before they reach page 30

Weightless

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HBY Kitchen 1960s

My late mother (see picture above, taken in the 1960s) was averse to weighing machines.

When she visited the doctor and had to be weighed, she did not want to be told or in any other way infrormed of her weight.

Her dislike of weighing machines extended into the kitchen. There were no kitchen scales in our home. A good cook, she managed without them. However, she did use a conical measuring device made by the Tala company. This contains printed markings that allow the user to dispence known amounts of powdered ingredients such as, for example, flour, rice, and sugar.

Years after my mother died, I married a lady from India. She told me that in the olden days, professional cooks of Indian origin often measured out cooking ingredients by feel rather than using a weighing device. For example if a cake required an equal weight of egg and flour, the cook would hold the egg in one hand and estimate its weight by feel and then measure the required amount of flour, also assessing its weight be feel alone. I do not know whether my mother possessed this skill, but regardless of that she was widely recognised to have been a competent cook.