You remember that scene from Good Will Hunting?
The bar scene where Matt Damon’s character gives that creepy academic parrot an intellectual smackdown?
It’s that kind of schooling I wish I’d been able to give a few students at Oxford.
There was never any real thinking done in that institution of “education”.
Every debate, discussion, and socratic tutorial was built upon the foundations of third-rate spewings of second-rate regurgitations of so-called authorities.
We read a lot of books, knew a lot of big words, and were great at alienating others with our intellectual “superiority”, but anything out of arrogant mouths was the material equivalent of a crusty, foul-smelling Kleenex. And we all know spunking into a tissue isn’t exactly original.
How to read
You read a lot of books. But do you retain them? Do you steal the thoughts within and claim them as your own? And do you even read the right books?
These are the questions posed by Schopenhauer in his essay ‘On Reading and Books’.
Reflect on what you read
One of the best techniques I know for not only retaining what you read but also actively engaging with it is this:
When you finish a page of a book, pause.
Be silent and think.
First think back and try to remember what you just read.
If this is the first time doing this kind of exercise, you might be startled to realise how little you were actually paying attention.
Think back and summarise the arguments, content, or thesis of what you just read.
This works for non-fiction and fiction alike.
Ask yourself what the author is trying to teach you.
Then, here’s the next part – the most important part…
Ask yourself if you agree with them.
Schopenhauer puts it like this (I’ve bolded what I believe the most important parts):
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher. Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part, done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such, however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts. Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost. Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.
Binge-reading is great fun when it comes to commercial fiction.
I’ve spent many a long-haul flight zipping through the latest Lee Child, Stephen King, or James Patterson.
But you can’t binge-read the classics.
You can’t speed-read the great works of literature.
I tried that once – back in Oxford when I was cramming for a tutorial – and tried to speed-read three Thomas Hardy novels in one day. I succeed in speed-reading, but I left the library with my head spinning and couldn’t remember a damn thing that I had just read.
I’d also argue that you should slow down every so often with commercial fiction too (and David Foster Wallace would agree with me).
Build reflection time into your reading time.
Scribble on the pages.
Argue with the author.
It’s okay not to agree with an author. Don’t agree with something just because it’s written. Give true and careful attention to what is written and hold statements up to the light – like a scientist examining a slide under a microscope – and make your own mind up.
The man who disagrees with someone like Schopenhauer and has his reasons has given infinitely more thought to the matters at hand than the man who merely parrots him word-for-word.
Choose your books wisely
Sturgeon’s Law states that “ninety per cent of everything is crap”.
Today, more than any other time in history, it will pay dividends to keep this law in mind. We’re bombarded by more competing forms of media than ever before – Netflix Originals, Instagram Stories, Spotify Playlists – but the overwhelming majority of this stuff is crap.
Are you making your book choices consciously?
It is the same in literature as in life. Wherever one goes one immediately comes upon the incorrigible mob of humanity. It exists everywhere in legions; crowding, soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the numberless bad books, those rank weeds of literature which extract nourishment from the corn and choke it.
They monopolise the time, money, and attention which really belong to good books and their noble aims; they are written merely with a view to making money or procuring places. They are not only useless, but they do positive harm. Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims solely at taking a few shillings out of the public’s pocket, and to accomplish this, author, publisher, and reviewer have joined forces.
I agree with Schopenhauer, but I don’t agree with the snobbish tone.
Don’t think for one minute that there are a set of books that are simply better than another set of books. That includes books churned out to make money.
Firstly, I see nothing wrong in mindlessly kicking back with some pulpy paperback and having a good time. Escapism in and of itself is reason enough to do something. But be conscious of why you’re reading a book and don’t fall prey to mindless consumerism in everything you do.
Know why you are reading a book and choose books that will get you closer to becoming a wholesome human being.
Books by Robert Ludlum, Dan Brown, and John Grisham sit on my bookshelf alongside the works of Aristotle, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare. I read from both pools with purpose and attention (albeit, admittedly in different degrees).
the art of not reading is highly important. This consists in not taking a book into one’s hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time—such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.
One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
The ‘Published This Month’ and current bestseller lists can definitely be a toxic place to hang out for a serious reader. Anything published in the last decade certainly hasn’t stood the test of time long enough to be considered a great work.
But you shouldn’t discard a book simply because it’s new.
Keeping up to date with the latest research and news is essential for a lot of professions, from medicine to law to tech. In those industries, a knowledge of the classics may be a help but a knowledge only of the classics is sure to be a hindrance.
For me, if a book isn’t a ‘hell yes’ from the blurb, reviews, and a sample of the different pages, it goes into the ‘don’t read’ category.
A brief note on how to sample a book effectively:
This method won’t work for Kindle because they just send you the beginning of a book. But when you’re in a real bookstore (whenever that rare treat may occur), use the ‘page 69 method’ (insert your own smutty joke here, you filthy animal) recommended by John Sutherland for finding your perfect book.
The beginning of a book isn’t a good enough indication of whether you’ll like the whole thing. But turning 69 pages in is likely to give you a better impression of whether the book is for you (someone actually did an experiment with this to see if they’d like certain books).
Oh, how like one commonplace mind is to another! How they are all fashioned in one form! How they all think alike under similar circumstances, and never differ! This is why their views are so personal and petty. And a stupid public reads the worthless trash written by these fellows for no other reason than that it has been printed to-day, while it leaves the works of great thinkers undisturbed on the bookshelves.
Incredible are the folly and perversity of a public that will leave unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds, of all times and all countries, for the sake of reading the writings of commonplace persons which appear daily, and breed every year in countless numbers like flies; merely because these writings have been printed to-day and are still wet from the press. It would be better if they were thrown on one side and rejected the day they appeared, as they must be after the lapse of a few years. They will then afford material for laughter as illustrating the follies of a former time.
It is because people will only read what is the newest instead of what is the best of all ages, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire.
I can’t help but sense a touch of bitterness in Schopenhauer’s writings here. His own writing was basically neglected in his lifetime and, let’s be honest, how many people are reading him today?
But reading something just because it’s old is as bad as avoiding something just because it’s new.
It’s true that books that stand the test of time and have been studied endlessly and been the result of countless criticisms and commentaries have almost certainly tapped into universal truths of human nature. But there’s also a lot of stuff that has endured that’s pure crap.
There are at all times two literatures which, although scarcely known to each other, progress side by side—the one real, the other merely apparent. The former grows into literature that lasts. Pursued by people who live for science or poetry, it goes its way earnestly and quietly, but extremely slowly; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen works in a century, which, however, are permanent. The other literature is pursued by people who live on science or poetry; it goes at a gallop amid a great noise and shouting of those taking part, and brings yearly many thousand works into the market. But after a few years one asks, Where are they? where is their fame, which was so great formerly? This class of literature may be distinguished as fleeting, the other as permanent.
Where to start reading the ‘writings of the noblest and rarest of minds’ is anybody’s guess and could be the subject of an entire book (in fact, many big books have been written about this).
But for our purposes here, if you want to start reading the big timeless classics, I can recommend a few different avenues to find recommendations:
- My personal reading list
- The Greatest Books website
- The Great Courses’ ‘Life Lessons from Great Books’
Buy time when you buy books
I ascribe to the same book-buying philosophy as Ryan Holiday.
If you want a book, buy it. Portion out everything else but don’t be stingy with books. And have more books around you than you can possibly read as a reminder to stay humble (because you know so little).
Werner Herzog advised a poor filmmaker to steal a camera for their art. And I’d be a complete hypocrite if I didn’t advise poor students of literature to steal books (though you really should just get a library card – libraries still exist, you know).
But, in a manner that seems to completely contradict what I just said, I also agree with Schopenhauer that the buying of books is useless if you don’t have time in which to read them.
It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents. To desire that a man should retain everything he has ever read, is the same as wishing him to retain in his stomach all that he has ever eaten. He has been bodily nourished on what he has eaten, and mentally on what he has read, and through them become what he is. As the body assimilates what is homogeneous to it, so will a man retain what interests him; in other words, what coincides with his system of thought or suits his ends. Every one has aims, but very few have anything approaching a system of thought. This is why such people do not take an objective interest in anything, and why they learn nothing from what they read: they remember nothing about it.
Repetitio est mater studiorum. Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the matter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light.
So go crazy and have a good old binge at Book Depository (cheaper than Amazon). But get up an hour earlier and sit down with a cup of coffee and pen and read the books you buy.
Read your books twice
Here’s my method.
I read a book through once, highlighting and taking notes.
Then I put it aside for a week or so and let the lessons swirl around my unconscious.
Then I return to the book, using the notes and highlights as anchors for a focused re-read. I then typically take the best parts, most resonant parts, of my highlights and do a write-up or book review and try to tie the knowledge into all the knowledge I’ve gained from other books and through life experiences.
If you go into the reading of a book with the attitude that this is only your first reading and you’re going to have another reading, it will dramatically alter the way you approach the work. Your first reading will become way more consciousness.
Reading is work
The reason we’re taking all of this so seriously is because reading is serious business.
Works are the quintessence of a mind, and are therefore always of by far greater value than conversation, even if it be the conversation of the greatest mind. In every essential a man’s works surpass his conversation and leave it far behind. Even the writings of an ordinary man may be instructive, worth reading, and entertaining, for the simple reason that they are the quintessence of that man’s mind—that is to say, the writings are the result and fruit of his whole thought and study; while we should be dissatisfied with his conversation. Accordingly, it is possible to read books written by people whose conversation would give us no satisfaction; so that the mind will only by degrees attain high culture by finding entertainment almost entirely in books, and not in men.
A book is the life work of an individual. You read a great book and you’re reading a significant amount of effort put into making one’s thoughts as clear and resonant as possible.
You can read a man’s life learnings in a single sitting.
To squander such an opportunity, such a gift, with anything other than full attention is an insult to the author.
Now go read.