Tag: reading

How to Read and Take Notes Like a PhD Student (From Someone Near the Finish Line)

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I wrote an earlier version of this post in 2023, partway through my doctoral program. Looking back at it, I can see the problem immediately: it reads like a summary of advice I’d read somewhere, not advice I’d actually lived.

Four years into my dissertation, near the finish line, I want to rewrite it properly. Not a listicle of tips. Not a summary of what PhD students are supposed to do. An honest account of what actually works — for reading comprehensively, retaining what matters, and building the kind of knowledge base that holds up under the pressure of original research.

Some of this applies only to doctoral work. Most of it applies to anyone who reads seriously and wants to remember what they read.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

Here’s the dirty secret of academic reading: nobody reads everything. Not the students, not the professors assigning the reading, not the scholars whose bibliographies look like small libraries.

The volume is genuinely impossible. A serious doctoral seminar can assign 300–500 pages a week. A comprehensive exam reading list might run to 150 books and several hundred articles. No one reads all of that cover to cover and retains it. The people who try to are usually the ones who burn out.

The skill isn’t reading everything. The skill is reading strategically — knowing what you need from a text before you open it, finding it efficiently, and processing it in a way that makes it retrievable and useful later.

That’s the entire game. Everything below is in service of it.

Three Modes of Reading (And Why They’re Different)

Not all reading has the same purpose, and trying to use one approach for everything is where most people go wrong. I work in three distinct modes, and switching between them deliberately has been one of the most important adjustments I’ve made.

Reading for Understanding

This is your slowest, most deliberate mode. You use it on texts that are foundational to your work — the sources you need to actually understand, not just reference. Dissertations are built on a handful of these. Everything else is commentary.

For this mode:

  • Read the introduction and conclusion first. For a book, this tells you the argument before you encounter the evidence for it, which makes the chapters comprehensible in a way they wouldn’t otherwise be.
  • Read chapter by chapter, pausing at the end of each to write a single paragraph — not a summary, but what I now think because of this chapter. That’s the difference between reading and learning.
  • Read footnotes selectively. They’re where scholars conduct their real conversations with each other — where they agree, dispute, complicate, and qualify. Some of the best sources I’ve found were in footnotes.
  • Write in the margins. I use Blackwing pencils for this — erasable, smooth, and they force me to be deliberate because space is limited. I use sticky flag tabs to mark pages I know I’ll return to.

Reading for Retention

This is reading you do with the explicit goal of remembering it months or years from now — for comprehensive exams, for situating your research within a field, for the kind of conversational fluency about a body of literature that you need to have by the time you defend.

Retention is not a passive process. Passive reading produces passive forgetting. What actually builds long-term memory:

Active recall over re-reading. After reading a section, close the book and write from memory what you just read. Not copying — reconstructing. The effort of reconstruction is what encodes the information. This is uncomfortable, and that discomfort is the point.

Note to your future self, not to the text. Most students write notes that are essentially paraphrases of the source. These notes are almost useless for retention because they still require the source to be meaningful. Write instead what you think the argument is, why it matters, and how it connects to things you already know. This takes longer and produces fewer words — and those words are worth ten times as much.

Spaced return. Come back to your notes on a source a week after you wrote them, then a month after. Add anything that wasn’t there before. The gaps reveal what you didn’t actually understand.

Reading for Research

This is your fastest, most surgical mode. You have a specific question. You need to know if this text addresses it. You don’t have time to read everything.

The tools here are underused by most students:

The index is your first stop, not the text itself. Establish your key terms before you open the book, then go directly to those entries. A 400-page book might have four pages that are genuinely relevant to your specific question. Find them in five minutes instead of reading everything, hoping to stumble across them.

Ctrl+F/Command+F for PDFs. Academic articles as PDFs are searchable. Use it relentlessly. The phrase you need is in there somewhere.

Introduction and conclusion first, always. Most academic books make their central argument in the first and last chapters. Read those before anything else. If the argument isn’t relevant to your project, you’ve saved yourself hours. If it is, you now know what you’re looking for in the middle.

Citation backward. When you find a source that’s directly relevant to your project, look at its bibliography. Follow the citations backward. This is how you map a field efficiently — one key text leads to the three texts it’s in conversation with, which each lead to three more, until you’ve traced the lineage of an idea.

The Note-Taking System That Actually Works

I’ve tried most things. The Cornell method, plain Word documents, elaborate Evernote hierarchies, and more. What I’ve landed on is a hybrid system that I’ve described in more detail in my Zettelkasten post, but the core principle is this:

Notes should capture what you think, not what the source said.

When I read something worth keeping, I write a note that answers three questions:

  1. What is the argument?
  2. Why does it matter — to the field, to my project, to how I think about this topic?
  3. What does this connect to that I already know?

That last question is the one most people skip. It’s also the one that determines whether the note is useful six months from now or just another thing you vaguely remember reading.

The Physical Layer

I use 4×6 ruled index cards for permanent notes — one idea per card, written by hand. The physical act of writing slows me down enough to think about what I’m actually trying to say. A date stamp goes on every card when it enters the system. Cards live in a card box organized by loose topic clusters.

For quick capture — ideas mid-reading, thoughts in a seminar, connections that occur to me in the car — I use a Field Notes notebook in my pocket. These are temporary. Their job is to get the idea out of my head. I process them into permanent notes later.

The Digital Layer

Notion is where my system lives at scale. Every permanent note that survives the physical card stage gets entered into Notion with tags, source references, and links to related notes. The search capability is what makes this invaluable — finding a note about a source I read two years ago takes seconds. (Affiliate link)

I’m currently experimenting with Obsidian as a complement, specifically using it with Claude Code to surface connections across my note vault that I haven’t made manually. If you want to go deep on this, Andrej Karpathy recently published a pattern for this — the LLM Wiki — that’s one of the most interesting developments in personal knowledge management I’ve seen. More on that in the Zettelkasten post.

What to Do With Academic Articles (The Specific Workflow)

Articles are different from books, and they get short-changed in most reading advice. Here’s my workflow for a journal article that matters to my project:

  1. Read the abstract, then the introduction, then the conclusion. In that order. This tells me the argument, its context, and its implications before I’ve read a word of the actual analysis.
  2. Skim the section headers. Most academic articles are structured to be easy to navigate. The headers tell me where the argument lives and where I can move faster.
  3. Read the parts that matter. For most articles, this is 40–60% of the text. The literature review often rehashes things I already know. The methods section may or may not be relevant. The analysis and discussion sections are almost always.
  4. Write the note immediately. Not after I’ve read three more articles. Right now, while it’s fresh. The note I write in the twenty minutes after reading an article is worth more than the note I write a week later from memory.
  5. Record the full citation before I close the tab. This sounds obvious. It is obvious. I’ve spent more time tracking down sources I didn’t fully cite than I care to admit.

The Tools

Physical:

Digital:

  • Notion — for the searchable permanent note archive
  • Obsidian — for graph visualization and the LLM Wiki experiment (free)
  • Zotero — free reference manager; essential for tracking citations across a large project

Books:

The Honest Part

Here’s what nobody who writes these posts usually says: the reading load of doctoral work is genuinely brutal, and no system makes it easy. There are weeks when I’ve read 400 pages and felt like I retained almost none of it. There are other weeks when a single 30-page article reshapes how I think about my entire project.

The difference isn’t usually reading speed or technique. It’s engagement. When I’m reading something I’m genuinely curious about, my retention is dramatically better. When I’m reading something I’ve convinced myself I “should” read, it evaporates.

This isn’t an argument for only reading what you want. It’s an argument for finding what’s genuinely interesting in even the readings that feel like an obligation — the question that hasn’t been answered, the argument you disagree with, the footnote that opens a door you didn’t know was there. Active curiosity is better than passive discipline every time.

Four years in, near the finish, what I’ve learned is that the reading never stops being hard. You just get better at finding the parts that matter, connecting them to what you already know, and making something out of them.

That’s the whole skill. Everything else is tools.

The physical tools I use for reading and note-taking — notecards, Field Notes, Blackwings, date stamp, highlighters — live on my Favorite Gear page. The deeper dive into the Zettelkasten system I use for organizing all of this is here.


The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!

2,178 Digitized Occult Books: Strange Treasures for Authentic Learning

Curiosa Physica

I want to tell you about a library in Amsterdam housed in a 17th-century building called the House with the Heads, funded in part by the author of The Da Vinci Code, with a collection that was granted UNESCO Memory of the World status in 2022, and whose digital archive you can browse for free from your couch right now.

The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica — the Ritman Library, now housed at the Embassy of the Free Mind — contains roughly 30,000 titles on Western esotericism, mysticism, alchemy, astrology, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, and related traditions. In 2018, after Dan Brown donated €300,000 to fund the digitization project (he’d visited the library multiple times while researching The Lost Symbol and Inferno), the library launched what they called, with genuine wit, Hermetically Open: a free, publicly accessible digital archive of its rarest pre-1900 texts. As of 2025, 2,178 books are fully scanned and available online.

The collection includes the Corpus Hermeticum from 1472, Giordano Bruno’s work from 1584, the first printed visual representation of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life from 1516, alchemical manuscripts with intricate hand-drawn diagrams, and hundreds of texts in Latin, Dutch, German, French, and English that blur every boundary we’ve drawn between science, philosophy, theology, medicine, and magic.

My first thought when I found this collection was: this is exactly what I want students to encounter.

Why “Occult” Is the Wrong Frame for This

The word does its work on us. “Occult” conjures Halloween aesthetics and conspiracy theories, and it’s easy to dismiss the whole thing as fringe material with no serious application in a classroom.

That reaction, though, says more about our current assumptions about knowledge than it says about these texts.

For several centuries of Western intellectual history, there was no clean dividing line between alchemy and chemistry, between astrology and astronomy, between hermetic philosophy and natural science. Isaac Newton — who gave us calculus, the laws of motion, and the theory of universal gravitation — spent at least as much of his intellectual energy on alchemy and Biblical prophecy as he did on physics. His alchemical manuscripts are available online too, through Cambridge’s digital library. The man who arguably launched the scientific revolution was also, by any contemporary definition, deeply engaged in occult practice.

This isn’t an embarrassing footnote. It’s actually essential context for understanding how scientific knowledge develops — through the messy, often wrong, often ideologically entangled process of humans trying to make sense of the world with the conceptual tools they have available. The Ritman collection is a primary source archive for that story.

As a doctoral student who has spent years reading about how knowledge is constructed, organized, and transmitted, I find this collection genuinely thrilling. These books are where the medieval and the modern collide. They’re where you can see what people got wrong and what they got surprisingly right, often in the same text, often for reasons that have nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the conceptual frameworks available to them.

That’s exactly what I want students to sit with.

What Makes This Useful for Teachers

The collection isn’t neat. It’s multilingual, dense, and built for scholars. That’s part of the point — it’s not pre-digested curriculum content, it’s actual historical material that requires work to interpret. For teachers who believe students should wrestle with primary sources rather than always receiving polished summaries of them, this is a goldmine.

A few ways I’d use this across disciplines:

History and Social Studies — Trace how alchemy became chemistry. Look at how astrology shaped political decisions in early modern Europe. Ask students why the intellectual tradition represented here was systematically excluded from what we now call the history of science, and what that exclusion says about how we decide what counts as legitimate knowledge.

English and Literature — The visual and linguistic strangeness of these texts is remarkable. The archaic spellings, the “long s” that looks like an f, the allegorical imagery, the blend of Latin and vernacular — all of it offers material for close reading and for connecting to the Gothic, Romantic, and magical realist traditions that drew heavily from this well.

Science — Contrast alchemical “recipes” with modern chemical procedures. Examine how flawed models of the cosmos were still generative — the people using them weren’t stupid, they were working at the edge of what was knowable. What does that say about our own current models?

Art and Design — The illuminated manuscripts and alchemical diagrams in this collection are extraordinary visual objects. The symbolic language is dense and codified and genuinely beautiful. There’s serious material here for design history, visual communication, and semiotics.

Philosophy — The Hermetic tradition represents a sustained attempt to synthesize Greek philosophy, early Christian theology, Jewish mysticism, and natural observation into a unified account of reality. That synthesis didn’t work out the way its practitioners hoped. But the attempt itself raises questions about knowledge, interpretation, and the limits of any single framework for understanding the world — questions that don’t go away.

The cross-disciplinary angle is what I find most powerful. One of the things that frustrated me most in my years as an educator before moving into instructional coaching is how thoroughly we’ve siloed knowledge. Students take chemistry, history, and English as separate things, as if the history of chemistry weren’t fascinating, as if the literary history of science didn’t exist. The Ritman collection doesn’t respect those boundaries because it predates our drawing of them.

The Resource

The collection is free, fully accessible online, and searchable — though the search interface takes some patience. The direct link to the digital catalog is here. I’d recommend starting with the “Digital collection” page, which gives you some orientation before you dive in.

A few things worth knowing:

  • The majority of texts are in Latin, Dutch, German, or French. English-language texts exist, but aren’t the majority. For classroom use, this is actually an opportunity — translation, context-building, and working with unfamiliar material are valuable skills.
  • The image quality varies, but the rare and fragile items were prioritized for digitization, so many of the most valuable texts are well scanned.
  • The broader collection, which includes 30,000 titles and continues to grow, is housed at the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam. If you’re ever there, it’s worth visiting.

The collection earned UNESCO Memory of the World status in 2022, a designation UNESCO does not hand out lightly. This is genuinely important cultural heritage, now freely available to anyone with internet access. That’s remarkable.

Dan Brown’s novels that led him to the Ritman Library — The Lost Symbol and Inferno — both draw heavily on the kind of Hermetic and esoteric tradition documented in this collection. If you want a somewhat lurid but surprisingly well-researched tour of the ideas, they’re a decent starting point. Brown is not a subtle writer, but he did his homework.

Related on this site: the AI books post covers how knowledge evolves and what it means to think critically about the tools we use — a thread that runs directly through what this collection makes visible.

What Teachers Need to Understand About AI and the Economy — A Reading List

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Here’s something that should be keeping school leaders up at night: 55% of recent graduates report that their academic programs didn’t prepare them to use generative AI tools in the workforce. Not just use AI well — use it at all. We are preparing students for an economy that is reorganizing itself faster than our curriculum review cycles can keep up with, and most schools are responding with either panic or denial.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects that AI will displace 92 million jobs while creating 170 million new ones — a net gain on paper, but that math only works if the people losing the 92 million jobs can access the 170 million new ones. That transition requires education, retraining, and policy infrastructure that does not currently exist at the scale needed. Young workers in AI-exposed occupations are already experiencing shifts in employment. The college wage premium has flattened. Jobs requiring AI skills now command a 56% wage premium over those that don’t — up from 25% just the year before.

This is not an abstract future problem. It is the context in which our students will graduate.

I don’t write primarily about business or economics — this site is about education, technology, and the ideas that shape both. But understanding how AI is disrupting the economy is part of understanding what we are actually preparing students for. The books below are the ones I’d put in front of any educator or school leader who wants to think more seriously about this.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma — Mustafa Suleyman

Get it on Amazon

Suleyman co-founded DeepMind (later acquired by Google) and Inflection AI before becoming CEO of Microsoft AI. He is, in other words, someone who has been building this technology from the ground up and who has had to think carefully about what he was building.

The Coming Wave is his argument that we are facing a genuine inflection point: AI and synthetic biology are advancing faster than governance structures can keep pace with, and the window to build appropriate containment mechanisms is closing. His central concern isn’t that AI is malevolent — it’s that the concentration of power that comes with controlling transformative technology is itself the problem, whether that power sits with corporations, governments, or both.

For educators: the chapter on economic disruption is essential reading. Suleyman doesn’t pretend the transition will be smooth. He takes seriously the question of what happens to people and communities during the displacement phase, which is precisely the phase our current students are entering.

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order — Kai-Fu Lee

Get it on Amazon

Lee has a unique vantage point: he’s worked at Apple, Microsoft, and Google, and then moved to Beijing to lead Google China before becoming one of China’s leading AI investors. AI Superpowers was published in 2018, and some of the specific competitive dynamics have shifted, but the core argument holds: we are in a global race for AI dominance between two different models of how AI development should work, and the outcomes of that race will have profound economic consequences at every level.

The section on job displacement is where this book becomes most directly relevant to educators. Lee argues that routine cognitive work is the most vulnerable to automation — not just manual labor — and that the categories of work that will be protected are those requiring creativity, empathy, and complex human judgment. That framing has direct implications for what we teach and why.

Read this alongside The Coming Wave for a richer picture of the geopolitical and economic forces shaping the AI landscape.

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence — Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb

Get it on Amazon

Three economists from the University of Toronto built their framework around a deceptively simple claim: AI is, fundamentally, a technology that makes prediction cheaper. When prediction gets cheaper, the value of the things that complement prediction — judgment, action, data — increases. When prediction gets cheaper, the value of things that substitute for prediction — routine rule-following, low-stakes decision-making — decreases.

This framework is useful for educators because it maps directly onto a question we should be asking about curriculum: what are we teaching students that will be substituted by cheap AI prediction, and what are we teaching them that will be complemented by it? The answer has real implications for what genuinely rigorous education looks like in an AI economy. Prediction Machines is the most analytically useful book on this list for thinking through those questions.

The Age of AI: And Our Human Future — Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt & Daniel Huttenlocher

Get it on Amazon

An unusual collaboration: a former Secretary of State, a former Google CEO, and an MIT computer scientist thinking together about what AI means for how human societies understand the world. The book is less about the economic disruption and more about the epistemological one — the way AI systems generate outputs that humans can use without understanding how those outputs were produced, and what that does to decision-making in business, government, and education.

The argument that lands hardest for me as an educator: we have spent centuries building institutions of learning around the transmission and evaluation of human knowledge. AI is producing a new kind of knowledge — statistical, pattern-based, extraordinarily capable, and fundamentally alien to how human minds work. What does education mean in that context? This book doesn’t fully answer the question, but it asks it more precisely than most.

Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence — Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb

Get it on Amazon

The follow-up to Prediction Machines, published in 2022, moves from “here’s what AI does to economics” to “here’s how organizations and institutions will be restructured by it.” The core new argument: AI doesn’t just automate tasks; it disrupts the decision-making systems in which those tasks are embedded. That disruption creates power shifts — between professions, between institutions, between incumbents and challengers.

The education implications are direct. The authors discuss healthcare and legal services as sectors being restructured by AI-driven prediction, and the analysis applies equally to education. What happens to the teacher’s role when AI can provide personalized feedback faster and at greater scale? What happens to credentialing when AI can assess competencies that diplomas approximate? These aren’t comfortable questions, but they’re the right ones to be asking now rather than after the disruption has already happened.

The Question Underneath All of These Books

The books above are written primarily for business leaders, policymakers, and economists. That’s who they were designed for. But they all circle around a fundamentally educational question: what kind of people do we need to develop, and what do we need to prepare them for, in an economy being reorganized by AI?

Self-Determination Theory gives us part of the answer — humans are most resilient and most capable when they have genuine autonomy, a sense of competence, and meaningful connection. Those psychological needs don’t get automated. They get more important as the tasks around them do.

The Connectivist framing that the network is where knowledge lives is also useful here: in an economy where AI can provide information faster than any human, the competitive advantage lies in the quality of your connections — to ideas, to people, to problems worth solving — and in your capacity to navigate those networks with judgment. That’s what education in an AI economy should be building.

These books don’t answer those questions for us. But they describe the problem with enough precision that we can start asking the right ones.

Related on this site: the AI books post covers the books I’d recommend for understanding what AI actually is — how it works, what it can and can’t do, and what the most credible researchers think about its implications. That’s a companion list to this one.


The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!

Why Do They Fear Dragons?

For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it, too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons because they are afraid of freedom.

I’ve been reading a lot of Ursula K. LeGuin lately. Whether or not it’s because I hadn’t read much of her work before I read The Dispossessed last year, I’m not sure. But I wish I had.

I’m working through her essays published in The Language of the Night and am transfixed by her words and thoughts.

She’s so fucking good.

As I watch the current state of the world play out and think about all the “bullies” who now sit in high political positions in our country, and I think back to my high school days and those bullies, there is a recurring constant: their hatred of all things fantastical.

And this Le Guin quote feels very appropriate for this moment:

For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it, too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons because they are afraid of freedom.


The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!

Coming This Fall: A Must-Read for Every K–8 Educator Ready to Ignite Innovation

Sparking Innovation in Children Through STEM Exploration: A K-8 Teacher′s Guide to Inspiring Future Problem Solvers

In Sparking Innovation in Children Through STEM Exploration: A K–8 Teacher’s Guide to Inspiring Future Problem Solvers, Brandy Howard and Richard Cox, Jr. offer more than a book—they offer a call to action. Grounded in empathy, equity, and real-world relevance, this essential resource equips educators with a clear, adaptable framework to transform their classrooms into incubators of creativity and critical thinking.

At the heart of the book is the Innov8 Framework—eight flexible, student-centered phases designed to spark curiosity, fuel collaboration, and sustain meaningful impact. Whether you’re new to STEM integration or looking to deepen your practice, this book provides:

  • Step-by-step guidance through the Innov8 process
  • Editable tools you can use tomorrow—lesson plans, interest surveys, reflection prompts, and more
  • Real stories from classrooms that are already making innovation thrive

This is the blueprint for teaching that inspires. If you’re committed to preparing students for an unpredictable future—while anchoring learning in justice, inquiry, and agency—this book belongs on your shelf (and in your hands).


The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!

10 Must-Read New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books for June 2025

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The heat has officially arrived here in Kentucky, and with it comes one of my favorite seasonal rituals: the Summer Reading Stack. You know the one. The books you optimistically pile up beside your hammock, or your travel bag, or your nightstand, knowing full well you won’t read them all, but determined to try anyway.

As I prepare to disappear into as many pages as possible between projects and planning, I’ve rounded up some of the June 2025 SFF releases that have piqued my curiosity, stirred my genre-loving soul, and whispered, “read me next.” This month’s picks include vampire spaceships, cursed couriers, underwater palaces, swan-based political coups, and so much more.

So pour yourself a tall glass of iced tea (or Romulan ale — I won’t judge), and dive into this list of stellar speculative fiction releases.

10 Fantastical New SFF Books for June 2025

Black Salt Queen by Samantha Bansil

Out June 3 (Bindery Books)

A dying queen. An heir who can’t get it together. A rival powerful enough to tear down everything. This high-stakes island fantasy features matriarchal legacy, political power grabs, and complicated magic. It’s giving Game of Thrones meets The Green Bone Saga — and I am here for it.

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

Out June 3 (Bindery Books)

If you told me this book was Dracula meets Battlestar Galactica, I’d throw my credits at the nearest data terminal. Set on the spaceship Demeter (a clever nod to Stoker), this queer horror story features space vampires, interstellar travel, and a haunted AI that might need to become Blade.

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott

Out June 10 (Tor Books)

When the royal road trip from hell goes sideways (thanks, arrogant prince), it’s up to Elen the courier to get everyone out of a haunted town alive. This one promises political intrigue, ancient magic, and the kind of “why am I always the responsible one?” energy I feel deep in my soul.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab

Out June 10 (Tor Books)

Three women. Three timelines. Vampires. Schwab’s gothic sensibilities are on full display in this “toxic lesbian vampire” novel (her words, not mine), and I’m already bracing for heartbreak, blood, and beautifully written trauma.

The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery by Clarence A. Haynes

Out June 17 (Legacy Lit)

A glamorous NYC publicist finds herself haunted — literally and figuratively — after a museum tragedy. Throw in a psychic caught in a ghostly love triangle and some deeply buried secrets, and this one sounds like The Sixth Sense meets Scandal with a Bronx twist.

Seventhblade by Tonia Laird

Out June 17 (ECW Press)

An Indigenous warrior mother seeking vengeance in a colonized city? Yes, please. Add in morally gray alliances, godlike powers, and a blood debt that could ignite a revolution, and you’ve got a fantasy epic I’m bumping to the top of the list.

New SFF for Young Readers (and the Young at Heart)

A Forgery of Fate by Elizabeth Lim

Out June 3 (Knopf Books)

Beauty and the Beast but make it a con artist with prophetic painting powers? Lim continues to blend folklore and feminism with flair. Truyan agrees to marry the Dragon King to save her family, but we all know that kind of bargain never goes according to plan…

Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman

Out June 24 (Random House)

A medieval town where freedom is earned by surviving a year and a day — until a ghost, a dragon, and a murder shake the walls. Hartman’s return promises haunting imagery and a layered coming-of-age story, perfect for fans of Seraphina and The Graveyard Book.

Embrace the Serpent by Sunya Mara

Out June 24 (HarperCollins)

A jeweler’s apprentice finds herself in the Serpent King’s castle. To survive, she marries him — but finds herself drawn to someone else entirely. Intrigue, jewels, forbidden romance… this one’s for readers who like their fantasy a little dark and a lot twisty.

A Treachery of Swans by A. B. Poranek

Out June 24 (Margaret K. McElderry Books)

Inspired by Swan Lake, this sapphic fantasy delivers palace politics, magical transformations, and a mission to restore a kingdom’s lost magic. When the king dies and blame falls on the wrong person, Odile must team up with the very person she betrayed to find the truth.

Bonus Picks (Because I Can’t Help Myself)

That’s all for now, fellow explorers of the weird and wonderful. If you pick up any of these, let me know — I’m always up for a good bookish conversation, especially if it involves morally ambiguous magic or sentient spaceships.

Until next time: read deeply, imagine wildly, and remember… the TBR pile is infinite, but your joy is the compass.


The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!

Trump Declares War on Libraries—Signs Order to Eliminate Federal Library Funding

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Libraries are one of the last truly public institutions—free, accessible to all, and serving millions every year. So of course, the Trump administration wants to destroy them.

On Friday night, Trump signed an executive order eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the only federal agency that funds America’s libraries. The same institution that provides:
📚 Early literacy programs for kids
📚 High-speed internet access for communities left behind by telecom giants
📚 Summer reading programs for children
📚 Job search assistance for unemployed workers
📚 Braille and talking books for people with visual impairments

All for just 0.003% of the federal budget—peanuts compared to corporate subsidies and military spending. But let’s be real: this isn’t about money. This is about power.

Libraries are one of the last spaces in America not controlled by corporations or the ultra-rich. They provide free access to knowledge, support marginalized communities, and serve as safe havens. That’s why the right-wing hates them.

This move is part of a broader fascist attack on public institutions. They’ve been banning books, terrorizing librarians, and defunding schools. Now they’re going after the very existence of libraries themselves.

We fight back.
📢 Call your reps and demand they stop this.
📢 Show up at town halls and library board meetings.
📢 Flood Congress with calls, emails, and protests.
📢 Support your local libraries—because once they’re gone, they won’t come back.

🔥 Defend public libraries. Defend public knowledge. Defend democracy. 🔥


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Transform Your Teaching Mindset: How Positive Thinking Drives Success in the Classroom

close up shot of inspiring words on a brown paper
Photo by Eva Bronzini on Pexels.com

Your mindset shapes every aspect of your teaching. It influences how you handle classroom challenges, connect with your students, and even how much you enjoy your career. A positive mindset isn’t about ignoring difficulties—it’s about seeing growth opportunities where others see obstacles. As Henry Ford wisely said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

For teachers, how you think about yourself and your work directly impacts your effectiveness. But how can you cultivate a positive teaching mindset when the job demands feel overwhelming? The answer lies in small, intentional practices that rewire your thinking and keep you focused on the possibilities rather than the problems.

Reframing Classroom Challenges

Teachers face tough days—students acting out, lessons falling flat, and mounting to-do lists. In these moments, it’s easy to feel discouraged. But reframing challenges can make all the difference. Instead of thinking, “This student will never improve,” shift to, “This student is showing me where they need the most support.” Reframing doesn’t ignore the problem—it changes how you approach it.

To reinforce this practice, try using affirmations such as:

  • “I am a resourceful and adaptable teacher.”
  • “I see challenges as opportunities to grow.”
  • “Every student has the potential to succeed, and I am part of their journey.”

Write these affirmations down or repeat them in moments of frustration to reset your mindset.

Visualization as a Teaching Tool

Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Visualization is a powerful technique often used by athletes and leaders, and it can be just as effective for teachers. Take five minutes each morning to picture your ideal day—students engaged, lessons flowing smoothly, and yourself responding with patience and confidence. This simple practice helps you enter the classroom with a clear vision of success.

Pair this practice with positive affirmations to strengthen its effect. For instance, while visualizing, repeat statements like, “I am confident and capable of handling any situation today.” Visualization, combined with affirmations, primes your brain to approach the day with clarity and focus.

Modeling Positivity in the Classroom

Your mindset impacts you and influences your students. When you approach teaching with optimism and confidence, your students are more likely to mirror those attitudes. Start the day with a positive affirmation for the class, such as “Today is a great day for learning.” Encourage students to create their own affirmations, fostering a classroom culture of positivity and growth.

Go Beyond Words With Tools That Amplify Your Efforts

While affirmations and visualization are powerful, tools like MindZoom Affirmations Software can take your mindset work to the next level. MindZoom integrates subliminal affirmations into your daily life, effortlessly reinforcing positive thoughts as you work, plan, and teach. It’s an easy way to stay consistent and ensure your mindset aligns with the success you envision.

Your Next Step: Invest in Your Mindset

Teaching is challenging, but your mindset can make all the difference. Integrating affirmations, visualization, and tools that support positivity into your routine can transform how you approach your classroom and your career. Ready to take the next step in becoming the teacher you’ve always wanted to be?

Click here to learn how MindZoom Affirmations Software can help you unlock your full potential and thrive in 2025.

5 Mind-Blowing Hard Sci-Fi Books Every True Science Geek Needs to Read

hard sci fi

Hard sci-fi is the holy grail for those who crave stories that don’t just imagine the future but build it on the scaffolding of real-world science. This isn’t about lightsabers and warp drives (though we love those too)—this is about the kind of science fiction that puts your brain through its paces, leaves you Googling quantum mechanics at 2 a.m., and sparks debates about the Drake Equation over coffee.

Here’s a lineup of five brain-melting hard sci-fi books that will take you to the edge of human knowledge—and shove you right over it.

Evolution by Stephen Baxter

Scientific Brain Expansion: A Billion-Year Saga

Evolution isn’t just a book—it’s a towering cathedral of science, built molecule by molecule, epoch by epoch. Stephen Baxter takes you on a ride through the entirety of life on Earth, from squishy proto-mammals scurrying underfoot as dinosaurs roar above to the wild speculative futures of a post-human world.

Every page is a love letter to the mechanics of evolution—natural selection, genetic drift, adaptation—it’s all here, dressed up in meticulous detail that feels as alive as the creatures it describes. This is the kind of book that leaves you staring at a tree or a bird and marveling, “How the heck did we all get here?” Baxter doesn’t just tell you; he shows you, and it’s awe-inspiring.

Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan

Scientific Brain Expansion: Lunar Mystery Delight

What’s cooler than finding a human corpse? Finding one on the Moon that’s 50,000 years old. That’s the hook of Inherit the Stars, and James P. Hogan runs with it in a way that makes your inner scientist do backflips.

Hogan’s engineering background shines like the light of a supernova as he digs into the nitty-gritty of space travel, genetics, and planetary archaeology. This is a book for the hard sci-fi purists who love their speculative elements wrapped in layers of plausible science. The mystery unfolds with the precision of a complex experiment, and the payoff is as satisfying as watching a perfectly calculated trajectory hit its mark.

Quarantine by Greg Egan

Scientific Brain Expansion: Quantum WTF

Greg Egan is a certified mad scientist of the sci-fi world, and Quarantine is his quantum manifesto. The solar system gets cut off from the universe by an impenetrable bubble (yes, your existential dread should kick in now), and what follows is a deep dive into the implications of quantum mechanics and human consciousness.

Egan doesn’t just throw jargon at you—he dares you to keep up. This book reads like a masterclass in theoretical physics wrapped in a noir thriller. If the Many-Worlds Interpretation or the role of the observer in quantum collapse gets your neurons firing, Quarantine is the kind of hard sci-fi trip you’ve been waiting for. Warning: may cause reality to feel a little flimsy after reading.

The Flight of the Aphrodite by S.J. Morden

Scientific Brain Expansion: Space Nerd Nirvana

This is the book for every space geek who’s ever dreamed of piloting a spacecraft into the great unknown. S.J. Morden uses his background as a geologist and planetary scientist to craft a story so steeped in realism, you’ll feel like you’re training for a real NASA mission.

The Aphrodite crew’s journey to Jupiter’s moons is a perfect mix of technical precision and human drama. The challenges feel real, the stakes are high, and the science is rock solid. You’ll geek out over the details of spacecraft mechanics and planetary geology while rooting for a crew facing the emotional and physical tolls of deep space exploration.

Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear

Scientific Brain Expansion: Genetic Apocalypse Now

Greg Bear doesn’t pull punches in Darwin’s Radio. He dives headfirst into the deep end of evolutionary biology, exploring a scenario where a retrovirus triggers humanity’s next evolutionary leap. Think of it as X-Men, but way more grounded in real-world science.

Bear masterfully combines hard genetic science with the kind of emotional and ethical dilemmas that make your heart ache and your brain buzz. It’s a genetic apocalypse wrapped in a profound exploration of humanity’s future—and you won’t be able to stop thinking about what comes next.

Closing Thoughts for the Hardcore Sci-Fi Geek

These books aren’t just stories—they’re experiences. They’ll challenge what you know, make you question your beliefs, and leave you in awe of what’s possible. This is the hard sci-fi we live for: the kind that makes you smarter, a little more curious, and much more in love with the universe.

Got a favorite hard sci-fi title we missed? Drop it in the comments. And remember, keep reaching for the stars—but don’t forget to check your math first.


The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!

Bill Gates’ Book Recommendations: A Curated Reading List from a Visionary Thinker

Bill Gate poses for a portrait at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., June 13, 2024.
Bill Gates poses for a portrait at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., June 13, 2024.

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s most prominent philanthropists, is as well-known for his voracious reading habits as he is for his technological and humanitarian achievements. Through his blog, Gates Notes, Gates regularly shares his insights on the books he’s reading, spanning a wide range of topics, including science, history, health, and personal development. Below is a curated list of some of Gates’ standout recommendations and a brief overview of why these books caught his attention.

Science and Technology

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Gates praises Harari’s ability to synthesize complex historical and evolutionary concepts into an engaging narrative. The book explores humanity’s journey from hunter-gatherers to the modern age, providing insights into how our species has shaped and been shaped by the world around us. It dives into the cognitive revolution, agricultural advancements, and industrial transformations that have defined human history.

What makes this book stand out to Gates is its ability to connect the dots between science, sociology, and history in a way that feels accessible and thought-provoking. It raises important questions about where humanity is headed and challenges readers to think critically about our impact on the planet and each other.

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

A favorite for its exploration of genetics and its profound implications for humanity, Gates appreciates how Mukherjee combines science with personal anecdotes. The book traces the history of genetic research, from Gregor Mendel’s pea plants to the groundbreaking Human Genome Project, shedding light on how genes influence everything from our appearance to our susceptibility to diseases.

Gates is particularly drawn to Mukherjee’s ability to humanize science, weaving together stories of scientists and patients to show the real-world implications of genetic discoveries. It’s a compelling read that bridges the gap between complex science and personal storytelling.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

While Gates authored this book, it reflects his deep commitment to addressing climate change. It’s a practical guide to achieving net-zero emissions, outlining actionable steps for governments, businesses, and individuals. Gates emphasizes the urgency of innovation in energy production, storage, and consumption to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Through detailed analysis and case studies, the book provides a hopeful yet realistic blueprint for tackling one of the world’s biggest challenges. Gates uses his platform to inspire readers to consider their role in creating a sustainable future.

History and Biography

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

Gates often references this book for its optimistic view on the decline of violence over human history. Backed by extensive data and analysis, Pinker argues that humanity is living in one of the most peaceful eras ever, thanks to advancements in governance, trade, and cultural norms.

This book resonates with Gates because of its data-driven approach to optimism, a perspective that aligns with his views on progress. Pinker’s meticulous research and engaging writing style make it a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the trajectory of human civilization.

Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

Gates admires Isaacson’s biography for portraying Leonardo’s insatiable curiosity and diverse talents. The book delves into da Vinci’s life as a painter, scientist, and inventor, revealing the genius behind iconic works like the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.

For Gates, this biography is not just a look at Leonardo’s accomplishments but a study of how curiosity and interdisciplinary thinking can drive innovation. It inspires readers to nurture their own curiosity and creativity.

Economics and Business

Factfulness: Ten Reasons Were Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

This book profoundly resonates with Gates due to its data-driven optimism about the state of the world and its call for informed decision-making. Rosling and his co-authors use engaging stories and statistics to debunk misconceptions about global trends, such as poverty, health, and education.

Gates appreciates how the book empowers readers with the tools to think critically about the information they consume. It’s a refreshing reminder that, despite our challenges, progress is happening on many fronts.

Business Adventures by John Brooks

Gates has called this his favorite business book of all time. It’s a collection of fascinating stories from the business world, offering timeless lessons on risk, leadership, and resilience. Each chapter examines a specific company or event, from Ford’s Edsel debacle to the rise of Xerox.

What Gates finds most compelling is how Brooks captures the human side of business, showing how decisions made under pressure can lead to triumphs and failures. The lessons in this book remain relevant for today’s entrepreneurs and executives.

Health and Global Development

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

Another Pinker title, this book’s focus on progress aligns closely with Gates’ belief in innovation and science as drivers of positive change. Pinker argues that the principles of the Enlightenment—reason, science, and humanism—have led to remarkable advancements in human welfare.

Gates values the book’s thorough analysis and optimistic tone, making it a compelling read for anyone interested in humanity’s future. It’s a powerful reminder of what we can achieve through collaboration and evidence-based thinking.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

Gates appreciates this book’s compassionate exploration of end-of-life care and its implications for healthcare systems. Gawande examines how modern medicine often prioritizes prolonging life over quality of life, and he advocates for a more patient-centered approach.

For Gates, this book highlights the importance of empathy and innovation in addressing one of the most challenging aspects of healthcare. It’s a thought-provoking read that resonates with both professionals and lay readers.

Fiction Favorites

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

A rare fiction pick from Gates, this humorous and heartwarming story about a socially awkward professor resonates with readers on many levels. The protagonist’s journey to find love through a structured “Wife Project” is endearing and thought-provoking.

Gates enjoys this book for its lighthearted exploration of human relationships and the quirks that make us unique. It’s a reminder that sometimes, stepping outside our comfort zones can lead to unexpected joy.

Why Read Like Bill Gates?

Gates’ reading list reflects his endless curiosity and commitment to learning. By diving into these books, you gain insights into the subjects that have shaped his thinking and approach to solving global challenges. From understanding climate science to exploring humanity’s history, these titles offer valuable knowledge and inspiration.

To follow Bill Gates’ recommendations and reflections, visit his blog, Gates Notes. Whether you want to broaden your horizons or deepen your expertise, Gates’ reading list is a great place to start.

What’s next on your reading list? Let us know in the comments, and stay tuned for more curated book recommendations from leading thinkers and innovators!


The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!