The Gospel Coalition

I began my quest in learning to read better by turning to Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why. I learned quickly that, like many similar books dealing with reading as an art, it depends almost wholly on poetry, novels, plays and short stories. There is no section of the book devoted to reading non-fiction–the very kind of book I will spend next year reading. Nevertheless, the author does offer a few thoughts worth pondering.

First off, here are some valuable thoughts from the book’s introduction:

There is no single way to read well, though there is a prime reason why we should read. Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found? If you are fortunate, you encounter a particular teacher who can help, yet finally you are alone, going on without further mediation. Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.

Reading is, indeed, the refuge of the solitary and is one of the greatest pleasures solitude can afford. Though I may not have access to the great historians, the great theologians, the great minds, through their books I can meet with them and listen to them. This is true in non-fiction as it is in imaginative literature. Read the rare, sublime biography and you will know what it is to meet a person in a book. Of course in the next year for every great historian or theologian I will undoubtedly also come face-to-face with several celebrities who have very little worth saying and even less worth hearing. But the principle, at least, still stands.

I also appreciated this principle: “Do not attempt to improve your neighbor or your neighborhood by what or how you read.” Such advice is valuable, though obviously not absolute. “Self-improvement is a large enough project for your mind and spirit: there are no ethics of reading. The mind should be kept at home until its primal ignorance has been purged; premature excursions into activism have their charm, but are time-consuming, and for reading there will never be enough time.” There is often a temptation when reading to embrace a single principle and to broadcast that principle to the world. Yet sometimes it is better to avoid being premature and to instead dedicate oneself to further study and to greater comprehension.

My reading next year will involve reading widely and reading quickly. It will be done largely in solitude and will introduce me to hundreds of people, I am sure–people who exist in the pages of all those books. It is a challenge I am looking forward to.