Read widely and outside your field

Christopher Lupke on C.T. Hsia’s strategies of reading and mentorship:

I would relay [Hsia’s] advice to any graduate student: Read widely and outside your field. Yes, it will slow you down somewhat, but it will give you contextual insight into your own specialization. (…) Hsia urged me to take afternoons and find a comfortable spot in the library where nobody would disturb me and read whole novels or chunks of novels, which I did and continue to do so.