By Amanda Patchin
The value of reading depends upon the quality of man’s imagination and the nature of his thinking. If his mind vibrates with so slow a rhythm that it scarcely pulsates unless aided, then any reading is better for him than none. The fiction addict cheaply living in the cheap stories of other lives would be scarcely alive at all without his story, The adenoidic errand boy besotted by a page of comics is better off than crouched in a corner staring at nothing. But men and women who possess an interior world of thinking, feeling, living as vivid as the exterior world of circumstance are merely drugging themselves when out of laziness or vicious relaxation
they read on and on into the endless columns of modern print where the level of what is said lies below the plane of their own intelligence. You can vulgarize taste as readily as improve it. You can get out of the habit of knowing yourself by too much lazy interest in knowing at third or fifth hand what other people are doing and thinking. (The Literary Review 1923)
***
In a sense, any reading is better than none. Reading a little or reading poorly is better than avoiding the written word altogether. But reading and reading well offers such a rich bounty of uncountable blessings that we ought to all do all we can to exploit this discipline. The discipline and processes of reading and writing can shape your critical thinking skills as well as make you a better communicator. These things are absolutely crucial for any job and are beyond necessary for the Christian who wants to understand and share their faith. It doesn’t matter whether you are interested in reading and writing as recreation or for their own sakes; these are tools you need in every part of your life. These things can be very uncomfortable for most people. Not everyone is born with an innate desire for the written word but, like learning to walk, it is worth the discomfort of trying something difficult.
For some reading is simply and completely pleasure and relaxation and they cannot conceive of it as a disciplined process. Anyone who thinks that discipline has no place in our pleasures and our leisure has no experience of its true operation. Undisciplined pleasure quickly becomes nothing of pleasure while retaining all of its undisciplined character. Unending sweets first please, then pall and finally sicken. Long vacations are initially relaxing, then dull and in the end, unendurable. Just so, unfocused and undisciplined reading becomes distracted, scattered and profitless. Like a petulant gourmand the careless reader flits from book to book seeking cheaper and cheaper thrills, the digestion becomes more and more dainty, unwilling and unable to wade through whole strong, meaty works for sustenance.
But it is not enough to know that something is good for one in order to be motivated to do it, that is the territory of the prim schoolmarm and the dour-faced bureaucrat. A recognition of the rightness, the saneness and the beauty of the thing is needed for the live soul. And my central contention is simply that Literature is eminently readable. Between the elaborate interpretation of scholars and the encrustations of ages of opinion there seems little room in common thought for the appreciation of its vast beauties. There is great pleasure in great literature. It is not an easy pleasure. It is not as accessible as the breezy storytelling of popular fiction but it is undoubtedly a profound pleasure. A pleasure that can and should be returned to again and again. A pleasure that needs to be cultivated to be fully understood. First Trollope and then Thoreau:
“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone…It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise. It requires a training such as athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and unreservedly as they were written.”
And really that seems to sum it all up. Literature rewards reading. Literature rewards deep reading. It greatly rewards re-reading. Some of its joy is attained with some effort but it continues with an exponential return on investment.
Young or old, there are books that will enrich your life and deepen your intellectual and spiritual activity. There is great wisdom resting in books both ancient and modern and they are essentially at your fingertips. Log on to Project Gutenberg for free digital copies of everything from Augustine to Aquinas to Chesterton. Visit Amazon and buy ultra cheap copies of the same. Visit your local bookstore. Head down to Cornerstone. The wisdom of the ages has never been so accessible to the average citizen. The very fact that you are literate is a gift of history and geography. Merely 200 years ago, or a few thousand miles south, the odds would be greatly against it.
If you are human then you are limited by the constraints of time. Every activity is a choice. Every choice a renunciation of something else. Last year, a factoid made it’s way around the internet claiming that an “exceptional” reader who reads an average of one book a week, would only be able to finish 3000 books in their lifetime. Much of the reaction among the book-blogging community was horror at how few that really was, at how little they would be able to read in their lifetimes and at how limiting they found that number. But like a poetic form that first constrains and then beautifies the thoughts in it, knowing that limitation gives serious readers everywhere the chance to consciously shape and plan their lifetime reading experience. Realizing one’s finitude can seem morbid but wisdom knows that acknowledging mortality is nothing more than the readiness to improve what life one has.
So often in our lives of plenty and even of excess we simply do the easy thing that is next to hand. We pick up the magazine sitting next to us, we read the book casually loaned by a friend, or even worse, we simply watch television instead of making the effort reading takes. But if you already have a love of books, a desire to read much and to read well and an idea of how many books you can conceivably consume in your lifetime then you can set out to read only – or at least mostly – that which adds to your life. It really just comes down to a question of time and energy. How much time can you reasonably devote to learning, to reading and to studying? How much do you really want to devote to it? And once you’ve made that determination, what do you really want out of the effort?
I think I’ve made it sufficiently clear where my loyalties are, what I think reading is for and how it we ought to approach it, with discipline and focus. But even with my dedication, with my delight in learning and love of “difficult” books, I sometimes waver. Reaching for the easy book on hand, wanting more mental vacation than is consistent with my goals and deeper desires. When I am in that place I stop to remember how profoundly my own life has been changed every time I’ve disciplined my reading even a little. Once I made a list and stuck to it for one year and my life will never be the same. Get some specific advice about good books to read and make a list and then stick to it. Head down to Cornerstone and talk with the staff there or send me an email and I’ll get you started. Read books and read them well.
AmandaPatchin is 29, and a graduate student at Boise State. She is currently studying English Literature and teaching English 101. In addition to her busy academic life, she also has two toddler sons with her wonderful husband, and their home life is crazy in the sunniest possible way. You can contact her via email (amandapatchin1@boisestate.edu) or visit her in her office at LA 209D.
