I recently read an interesting book, The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson.  It is the story of the theft of bird skins from a Natural History Museum. The birds were stolen because of the value of the feathers in salmon fish fly tying. The skins themselves have a fascinating history, connecting Alfred Russel Wallace with Darwin  and the deep interest in scientific inquiry in the 1800s. The author weaves together many stories, characters, environments, and historical eras. 

As I was reading it I was thinking about how much I was learning and also how this learning was affecting my understanding of what I had read before.  I made this mind map on Inspiration Maps for my amusement, connecting books I had read previously and listing how my perception of what I had learned from those books shifted slightly from the knowledge I gained from this book. Those deepened understandings are visually represented on this map by those ivory rectangles. I like to imagine my brain with these fired synapses.