“I looked forward to Deep Reading every week and the time flew by as we examined outstanding prose line by line, word by word. What was this author trying to make us feel, and how was she achieving it? Followed by fun exercises using what we learned and a final voluntary deep dive into our own work. Every session a joy!” – Katy, Teilnehmerin Becoming a Better Writer: Deep Reading)
I have been using the techniques from class as I do final edits on my
latest two stories, and they are working wonderfully. I am creating
better sentences and making wiser word choices because of the process. I plan on implementing this on all my stories. It’s great!” (David, Teilnehmer Becoming a Better Writer: Deep Reading)
“Deep Reading works like a magnifier: it exposes the meanings, mechanisms and secrets of literature. Michael’s class sharpened my sense for words, my own and others. Michael’s class sharpened my sense for words, my own and others. I learned a lot – and have now got my first short story published. ” (Christian, Teilnehmer Deep Reading for Writers)
“The Meetup format of these sessions is very interesting as they offer spontaneous and best practice ideas of how to approach writing whatever the style in a semi-structured format.
In this session, we looked at some texts by Lydia Davis which are very pithy and dense and we tried to analyse the mechanics and meanings behind the texts in a close reading exercise. Davis is a very unusual writer and Michael is very supportive at introducing readers to new and unknown authors.” (Niamh, Teilnehmerin Deep Reading for Writers)
“The piece-by-piece interpretation of a tiny bit of text generated a surprising number of dimensions of meaning. I wanted to read more and more.” (Júlia, architect)
“Es ist etwas völlig anderes, ein Buch selber und Wort für Wort zu entdecken anstatt es sich hirnlos vorkauen zu lassen. Unglaublich, wie spannend alte Schinken sein können.” (Dagmar, Informatikerin)
“I have attended three deep reading sessions by Michael and I am just enthused! I can say without fear of exaggerating that I never had so much fun reading.
A session on my own showed me how much of myself resonates while reading. I realized that reading is a much more personal and subjective experience than I thought. It feels completely different when you give yourself time to come along and let your thoughts and feelings unfold. But it is not only what I learned there but the session itself what I will remember for a long time.
The group sessions had an extra quality: reading can be such a social activity! It was great fun to read and discuss, and to realize what different perspectives and understanding of the text we all had. Time flew and we read, listened to each other, laughed with absolute focus.
All in all, the three sessions have already had a big impact on my reading. I have come to remember how much I love reading, I feel the drive to read literature again after years of “not having time”. The experience of going deep into a text has also contributed to a general feeling of slowing down and relaxation. Deep reading is a great mindfulness exercise in which I experience presence and focus, a luxury in times of constant bombarding with information which we can only process superficially. Reading slowly and for pleasure is a different skill that needs practice.” (María, personal coach/trainer)
“Unvoreingenommen und ungezwungen auf literarische Werke zuzugehen – das hat mir in der Schule immer gefehlt. Beim Deep Reading lernt man, seine eigenen Intuitionen ernst zu nehmen und einem Text auf den Grund zu gehen. Das bereichert meine Leseerfahrung ungemein – nicht nur bei literarischen Texten.” (Hannes, strategischer Berater)
“Attending a slow reading evening was a complete eye opener. I was firstly surprised by the fact that reading could be a communal act and such a social one too. It was revelatory, fun and has since influenced the way I read for the better. It was fascinating to hear how everybody’s experience coloured their reading of that night’s material. And it was exciting to feel such intrigue and interest in our shared reading of the material. In fact when I got home that night I had to read the remainder of the short story provided by Michael, as I was completely hooked by what we had read. I feel that I now approach reading with a more paced and appreciative understanding instead of just gobbling up words on the page. I try to keep in mind that the author has, hopefully, carefully constructed what I am reading in order to paint a specific picture and keeping that in mind adds such an incredible dimension to my reading. These days I am savouring every word.” (Eileen, musician/artist)
“Mir hat es viel Spaß gemacht, an einem Text länger zu verweilen (und wer mich kennt, weiß, dass das sonst wahrhaftig nicht leicht für mich ist, weil ich immer voll mit nächsten Ideen und Plänen bin…) und auf die Art und Weise Dinge zu benennen, die mir sonst beim Lesen eher unbewusst innerlich ablaufen und/oder erscheinen. Der Text, Kleists “Marquise von O….”, war schön gewählt – ich mag diese Art der Texte, die auf ihre ganz eigene Art auch zu unterhalten wissen.” (Hilke, Unternehmensberaterin, Teilnehmerin Skype-Workshop)
“Herzlichen Dank für die neue Erfahrung, die ich mit dem Deep Reading machen konnte. Eigentlich lese ich zur Zeit mehr Fachliteratur oder leichte, spannende Bücher. Heute habe ich entdeckt, dass auch literarischen Werken eine Leichtigkeit und Spannung innelebt. Es macht auch großen Spaß sich in der Gruppe über einen gelesenen Text auszutauschen.” (Corinne, Teilnehmerin Skype-Workshop)
“Thank you so much for this remarkable reading experience. Usually I’m a rather fast reader, always wanting to know what comes next, especially if I’m really hooked by a story. So stopping to read after the first three sentences was a bit like: What? – I don’t know anything yet! And then the story started to unfold sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph in the most amazing way. It was like immersing myself into the words and this way taking the time to notice the images, emotions and associations that surfaced. I’m sure when I read in my usual way I don’t get the full array of this. They simply rush by too fast. Also doing this together with other people was a great, additional benefit. I learned so much from the other participants input. I was astonished what wide scope of inspiration can come from a text if ALL associations of any reader are valid, allowed and spoken out loud. So thank you for showing me an entirely new way of reading. Too be continued…” (Claudia, Coach/Trainerin, Teilnehmerin Skype-Workshop)
“Thank you Michael for giving us so much free room to interpret and associate freely with such a complex text, at first glance. I like the fact that there is no right and wrong, almost everything is possible. It was a great experience reading a small text mainly considering I had not been confronted with literature in a group since my teenager time, where basically the experience had not been always that positive. I found it a creative process, full of ideas, inspiration and learnings. I got more and more curious about reading and understanding the different facets of the text. I was also interesting to understand how I perceive things and how others do, very complementary. Weiter so!” (Florenza, Life & Professional Coach, Skype-Workshop)