For my brainstorm I decided to analyze some of the quotes which most caught my attention:

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold , the two young men who masterminded the slaughter, (...) a leader and a follower, a smart kid and a loser. (pg. 420)

This statement really caught my attention and made me think about how dangerous it can be to be an imitator or a follower of a bad role model. I had a lot of intrigue to know which one of them was the leader and which one the follower and to know more about both. So I started to read about these two boys and all the descriptions I found about Dylan described him as a good boy whose main problem was his lack of personality. His mistake was to imitate and follow Eric. In our days we see imitators of role models everywhere. This statement makes me want to include in this third project a section focused on imitators and the problems related to having lack of personality. I will then focus on the types of readers who believe everything they read. 

          Secondly, when reading about Descartes in the section of On Meditative Writing and Its Consequences the statements which mostly dragged my attention where the following:

When Descartes reached that point in his life when he felt that nothing he had ever told in the past could be trusted, he, too, sealed himself off from the rest of society and contemplated the dark possibility that he might be doomed to live out the rest of his days in a dream world. (pg. 433)

There is nothing Descartes has ever thought or felt that cannot also be doubted.

(pg. 433).

This made me see Descartes as a person who reached a point in life where he didn’t believe or trust anything. During my life I have come across people like this, people who life against the tide and it surprised me how complex this people are. I want to analyze these complex personalities and connect this idea of being so distrustful to reading. These people doubt everything, even what they read and in my opinion this terribly limits their capacity of  making a consistent contribution to what they read.

          Finally, when reading the Dark Night of the Soul I started to feel the necessity of answering some of the questions the author rises related to reading such as the following:

Aside from gathering and organizing information, aside from generating critics and analyses that forever fall on deaf ears, what are the literate arts be said to be good for? How and in what limited ways might reading and writing be made to be matter in the new world that is evolving before our eyes? Is there any way to justify or explain a life spent working with and teaching others to work with texts? (pg. 424).

Why bother with reading and writing when the world is so obviously going to hell? (pg. 433).

I see hundreds of benefits in reading and writing so for me the answers to these questions are really obvious. Of course reading and writing matters in our world! I find hundreds of reasons to justify or explain a life spent working with and teaching others to work with books. When we read we learn,we become intelligent, we develop the mind, the imagination and the creative side of people. Moreover, it enables us to discover new things, to discover new worlds. Furthermore, one of the main things which I have learned through reading in this course is to become critical. I see Miller as the most critical writer within the three we have analyzed this semester. Consequently, one of the main ideas I want to develop in this project is the power of being critical, the power of being yourself and then I will relate this to reading and writing using miller as an example of a really good critical writer who is able to not only narrates stories but to also introduce his own perspective and thoughts.

          In sum, throughout this project I will be analyzing three types of persons: those who life imitating others, those who live against the tide, and those who are critical, who are themselves and work hard to make their own contribution to the world. I will then relate these personalities to reading. The aim of my project is to show the power of being a critical reader so I will be making a comparison between:

-Trustful readers: who believe everything they read.

-Wary readers: who doubt everything they read.

-Critical readers: who decide what to trust or distrust when reading and who are concerned about making their own contribution.