Benjamin McEvoy

Essays on writing, reading, and life

The 10 Commandments of Reading

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Here are the 10 commandments of reading:

I. Thou shalt not judge a book before understanding it.

   i. One understands a book by continuously asking these two questions:

  1. What is being said?
  2. How is it being said?

II. Thou shalt converse with the author, argue, and dialogue, in ink upon the page.

   i. This is called marginalia, and it is an art form.

   ii. Caveat: Ensure the first command is taken care of before following this one.

III. Thou shalt put thy author in conversation with others.

   i. Conversation with authors you’re reading now, have read before, and with people, author or no, across the wide expanse of history.

   ii. One shall endeavour to bring their author into real life conversations.

IV. Thou shalt reread.

   i. Caveat: There are, perhaps, only a hundred books in which it is worth one’s while to continuously reread across one’s lifetime; and these differ depending on who is doing the reading.

   ii. Caveat: There are perhaps a thousand books that may require one rereading but no more.

   iii. Caveat: The rest of the books are not worth rereading; and if one doesn’t deem a book necessary to reread, perhaps one should question reading it at all.

V. Thou shalt read imaginative literature both as though it were non-fiction and as though one were a character in that world.

VI. Thou shalt arrive at a work of non-fiction with questions one needs answers to, and leave the work with fresh questions that require answering.

   i. Caveat: Thou shalt learn to love the questions.

VII. Thou shalt not endeavour to change the world by what one reads, but rather to change oneself.

   i. Caveat: Changing oneself often means allowing the work to act upon oneself.

VIII. Thou shalt not take authors out of their time; remember always that, though some few rare writers may transcend their time, it is an unfair expectation to expect an author to not be of their time in some degrees.

IX. Thou shalt read voraciously, foremost for intellectual pleasure, secondly for the sating of curiosity, and thirdly for the moulding of one’s mind, spirit, and character.

X. Thou shalt read books as a mirror.

   i. Books may fall into one of two, or both, categories of mirror:

  1. A mirror of thyself.
  2. A mirror of nature.

Amen.