How to Read these Books?
“How do you read a book?” a friend recently asked me. What a great question that is! Of course, my friend was talking particularly about serious or academic-type reading, so what I am about to say may apply less to pleasure reading. (For example, I just finished my first Edmund Crispin mystery – with no pencil in hand!)
While I don’t claim to be an expert reader, there might be something here that will prove helpful to you:
- There’s a time and a place. That is, just about any time and any place. Sure, it’s great to have a designated study time and location. But take your book with you wherever you go. It is amazing how many opportunities for reading will present themselves when you would otherwise be waiting, bored and otherwise fruitless. You should never have to reach for the used magazine rack again! So take your book with you – don’t be afraid, embrace your inner book nerd!
- The many and the great. No matter how young you are, or how long you live, if you love books you will never be able to get to the bottom of your “want to read” list. To top it off I am a relatively slow reader, which is an additional handicap for me. However, when I get discouraged I remember the advice I received in one of my seminary classes – it may go back to one of the Reformers or possibly Erasmus. He said that true learning comes not from the quantity of books, but in “knowing a few great books well.” Of course I still regularly visit the used book stores and maintain a huge wish list on Amazon. But deep down, I believe that statement is true. And certainly the “greatest” book of all is the Bible, of which I will say more in another post (now located here).
- Cover to cover, or just selections? I tend to read books from cover-to-cover for a few reasons, including the fact that, when I’m done, I can then place them back on the shelves of my personal library as a kind of “trophy”! Of course I do sometimes just read sections or stop altogether, but that is not typical. However, my approach here might not be the best. James Emery White puts it this way: “Not every book qualifies for a cover-to-cover journey…Read each book to the degree that it deserves, and no more.”1 So with some books at least, skip, skim, and then really dig in when we get to parts of real value.
- Read one old book for every new one. C.S. Lewis recommended that we interweave old and new books in equal numbers – or, failing that, at least one old for every three new. The reason we should develop this habit is to combat the “chronological snobbery” characteristic of every age and “to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.” It is not that there is something magical about an old publication date. As Lewis explains, “People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.”2 And so old books can help correct the characteristic errors and blindesses of our own age. Of course this habit applies especially to the humanities, less to a reading sequence that must incorporate cutting-edge discoveries in the hard sciences.
- Mark up your books. I always read with pencil-in-hand and would encourage you to do so also. (Here I am driving my family crazy as we leave the house: “Where’s my book? And I can’t find a pencil!”) With your own underlinings, circlings, marginal ticks and marginal notes, you are not only helping yourself to retain the material, but when you place the book back on your shelf you have actually enhanced the volume for your future reference. And – being in pencil – the book is not ruined for future resale. I would reserve highlighters or pen for personal bibles or books that would never be purchased by a collector – for example, college texbooks in the “10th” edition. (Sorry, starting to lecture here.) My particular book-marking “system” has varied over time and I don’t think the details are really that important. Go with whatever seems to serve you best and does not bog you down too much in terms of reading speed. I also think it is a good practice to have a notebook at hand (and not just when reading), but I do not always follow that practice.
- Re-read good books. Lewis held the view that “the qualities of a good book could not be appreciated at the first reading.”3 (Is he going to quote C.S. Lewis again? Sure; refer to the section “The many and the great” above.) As an added bonus, you probably already own the book and can save the cash! In this tradition, I have recently re-read Francis Schaeffer’s True Spirituality and (for the third time I think) Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Now you may ask, what do I think about digital books? Not much experience yet. Great for quick searches and for cutting and pasting I guess. But for routine reading? I have my doubts. I do admit, however, to making generous use of books and lectures on CD and MP3 to help me on those long commutes.
NOTES
1 James Emery White, A Mind for God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 84.
2 C.S. Lewis, “Introduction” in St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, trans. by A. Religious of C.S.M.V. (London: Centary Press, 1944) and reprinted (NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1993). Lewis’ essay is reproduced in C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics ed. By Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993) pp. 200-207.
3 James Como, ed. C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table (NY: Collier, 1979), p. 206. Republished as Remembering C.S. Lewis (Ignatius Press, 2005).
What do you think? What other suggestions do you have? Please share. Happy reading.
By Ray Pennoyer (19 Aug 2010)
Other posts by this same author:
Denzel Washington, Martin Luther, and Our Strange Neglect of the Bible
Gordon Fee on the Book of Revelation
The Resurrection of Jesus
Lessons from the “Burn a Koran Day” Crisis
How Do You Read a Book?
The Pharisee in Me
Great Books for Summer – or Any Season
The reason we should develop this habit [reading old books along with new] is to combat the “chronological snobbery” characteristic of every age and “to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.” Mr. Lewis is inimitable.
Like your “trophy” concept. I may introduce this concept to my kids. Another incentive to encourage reading.
What is good reading? I’d like to see this concept reduced into a NEST course! Call the course “Christian Classics” and pick a few great authors-some were mentioned above. Would such a course encourage the life-long habit of appreciating and selecting excellent Christian literature? I think so and it would be welcomed and refreshing given the modern tendency towards education bent on pragmatism.
I’d also add don’t be afraid to add other things to the reading list. A short anecdotal story. While cleaning out a box of books belonging to my dad, I found unfortunately many were moldy and beyond repair because they were stored in a damp basement. Some of the books dated to the 1800′s: don’t let that encourage the thought that they have value because they near crumbled in my hands. The books were by John Stuart Mills, Friedrich Nietzsche, H.G. Wells, and many other authors. As it turns out these books belonged to the owner of my boyhood house who left the books behind when he sold it to my parents. He was a Yale/Columbia trained lawyer and bomber pilot in WWII -to give his educational pedigree and vintage. The books were used in his course work and were just excellent reading also. I spent a couple of days just sorting through the books. My wife occasionally stuck her head out of the window and made comments to encourage my slow progress. Slow it was as I journeyed with some of the great philosophers, historians and scientists who examined profound and not so profound questions of their day. Against my wife’s recommendations, and awareness, I slipped a few of the disintegrating books into a plastic bin and stashed it. I plan to get back to them so compelling the compositions! The point is, read the excellent Christian literature, but do not shy away from the excellent classics as well! Your journey will be rich! Just a thought!
Excellent thoughts. I think you could’ve used a few more C.S.L. quotes though (maybe I liked that because his works are my default), haha. I always aim for cover-to-cover: there is a better chance that I will do justice to the author’s view. However, that’s not always possible. In ‘How to Read a Book’, Mortimer Adler suggests that while true engagement should be our goal in reading, not all works deserve the same attention. Those which are truly classics are those which remain above everyone’s head (Adler’s definition) and so always challenge. I recall Lewis spoke not so much of great books, but rather that some books lend themselves more easily to good readers. And so the never ending journey! Further up and further in!
I appreciate the comment Josiah. You mention the Adler book: One of the things that I remember taking away from that work was to take seriously the Table of Contents and so to get a real sense of the flow of the book. And funny you mention another C.S. Lewis quote. There was a good one (about reading books selectively) that never made it into the text because I could not find the proper attribution documentation. I had all my Lewis works piled on my desk but I think it is in the C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table text – but I must not have marked it! Ahh…perfection alludes me once again. Maybe in a future revision. 8^)
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