The Joys of Reading

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bookslover

Puritan Board Doctor
Most of us on the Puritan Board are readers - almost by definition. Here is a splendid piece by the essayist, editor, and short story writer, Joseph Epstein. Now 83, Epstein, a life-long resident of Chicago, is about to publish his next book - his 17th collection of essays - this October. The piece is long, but worth it. Enjoy:

www.firstthings.com/article/2018/11/the-bookish-life
 
@bookslover

I enjoyed that, thanks.

One of my favorites from the article, where he discusses his undergraduate courses that eliminated textbooks and replaced them with the reading of certain ancient classics:

"Along with giving me a firsthand acquaintance with some of the great philosophers, historians, novelists, and poets of the Western world, the elimination of that dreary, baggy-pants middleman called the textbook gave me the confidence that I could read the most serious of books. Somehow it also gave me a rough sense of what is serious in the way of reading and what is not. Anyone who has read a hundred pages of Herodotus senses that it is probably a mistake—that is, a waste of your finite and therefore severely limited time on earth—to read a six-hundred-page biography of Bobby Kennedy, unless, that is, you can find one written by Xenophon."
 
@bookslover

I enjoyed that, thanks.

One of my favorites from the article, where he discusses his undergraduate courses that eliminated textbooks and replaced them with the reading of certain ancient classics:

"Along with giving me a firsthand acquaintance with some of the great philosophers, historians, novelists, and poets of the Western world, the elimination of that dreary, baggy-pants middleman called the textbook gave me the confidence that I could read the most serious of books. Somehow it also gave me a rough sense of what is serious in the way of reading and what is not. Anyone who has read a hundred pages of Herodotus senses that it is probably a mistake—that is, a waste of your finite and therefore severely limited time on earth—to read a six-hundred-page biography of Bobby Kennedy, unless, that is, you can find one written by Xenophon."

Yes, I love that section, too. His remark about textbooks reminds me of what C. S. Lewis once said, to the effect that, instead of reading a book about, say, Aristotle, one should read Aristotle himself, because most reasonably intelligent people will be able to grasp what Aristotle says, while too many books about Aristotle amount to several hundred pages of muddle-headedness. Cut out the middleman. Go straight to the source.
 
Yes, I love that section, too. His remark about textbooks reminds me of what C. S. Lewis once said, to the effect that, instead of reading a book about, say, Aristotle, one should read Aristotle himself, because most reasonably intelligent people will be able to grasp what Aristotle says, while too many books about Aristotle amount to several hundred pages of muddle-headedness. Cut out the middleman. Go straight to the source.

I love that outlook!
 
One that really resonated with me in this essay... I’m also a slow reader and I struggle to retain what I do read. This has been exceptionally frustrating for me over the past few years as I’ve attempted to ramp up my theological knowledge. I feel as though I’ve spent so much time and effort worrying about remembering and processing everything I read and being frustrated I simply don’t have enough time to read even a decent portion of the books I want to read.

I now am trying to read the Bible and commentaries more for enjoyment or devotionally as opposed to stressing over whether I’ll be able to articulate a concept in some hypothetical conversation I likely will never have with anyone.
 
This paragraph has probably penetrated my subconscious in my approach to literature in the past week:

"Twenty or so years ago there was a vogue for speed-reading. (“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes,” Woody Allen quipped. “It involves Russia.”) But why, one wonders, would you wish to speed up an activity that gives pleasure? Speed-reading? I’d as soon take a course in speed-eating [...]. Yet the notion of speed generally hovers over the act of reading. “A real page-turner,” people say of certain novels or biographies. I prefer to read books that are page-stoppers, that cause me to stop and contemplate a striking idea, an elegant phrase, an admirably constructed sentence. A serious reader reads with a pencil in hand, to sideline, underline, make a note."

A similar vein, John Owen on speed-reading title-gazing in his introduction to "The Death of Christ":

Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again, - thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell!

The mindest today is to digest information quickly so that you may achieve maximum output, and to associate speed with competent utilization. That's why speed reading courses sell well, though it's more like sleight-of-hand than real magic. Get as much as possible, as fast as possible, within the set time budget.

Oppositely, a good book is a good friend that invites you into his world, and warmly pleads for you to stay awhile and talk further. Friends don't think efficiency, and they don't watch the clock. There is no time in the world of a friend. The one who puts a time budget on his friend is not worthy of the treasures that a friend may have to share.

The most valuable treasures demand time, but are worth it because they are most pleasurable; and pleasure of good things is lost on the clock-watcher. Those who have relished hours in the company of a friend or a good book always say the stay was too short.
 
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