August 1965 — VOL. 46, No. 8 — Building a Home
Library
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Reading good books is not something to
be indulged in as a luxury. It is a necessity for anyone who
intends to give his life and work a touch of quality. The
most real wealth is not what we put into our piggy banks but
what we develop in our heads.
Books instruct us without anger, threats and harsh discipline.
They do not sneer at our ignorance or grumble at our mistakes.
They ask only that we spend some time in the company of greatness
so that we may absorb some of its attributes.
You do not read a book for the book's sake, but for your
own.
You may read because in your high—pressure life, studded
with problems and emergencies, you need periods of relief
and yet recognize that peace of mind does not mean numbness
of mind.
You may read because you never had an opportunity to go
to university, and books give you a chance to get something
you missed.
You may read because your job is routine, and books give
you a feeling of depth in life.
You may read because you see social, economic and philosophical
problems which need solution, and you believe that the best
thinking of all past ages may be useful in your age, too.
You may read because you are tired of the shallowness of
contemporary life, bored by the current conversational commonplaces,
and wearied of shop talk and gossip about people.
Whatever your dominant personal reason, you will find that
reading gives knowledge, creative power, satisfaction and
relaxation. It cultivates your mind by calling its faculties
into exercise.
It is well to have some destination in mind. As Arnold Bennett
remarks in Literary Taste (a Pelican Book), a man starting
out for a walk says to himself that he will reach some given
point, or that he will progress at a given speed for a given
distance, or that he will remain on his feet for a given time.
He makes these decisions according to his ambition, his physical
capacity and his pleasure. So with reading.
Books are a source of pleasure the purest and the most lasting.
They enhance your sensation of the interestingness of life.
Reading them is not a violent pleasure like the gross enjoyment
of an uncultivated mind, but a subtle delight.
Reading dispels prejudices which hem our minds within narrow
spaces. One of the things that will surprise you as you read
the Greek, Hebrew and Christian books; the Roman, French,
Italian and British books; the books of philosophy, poetry
and politics, and the books that just tell about people having
fun, is that human nature is much the same today as it has
been ever since writing began to tell us about it.
Some people act as if it were demeaning to their manhood
to wish to be well—read, but you can no more be a healthy
person mentally without reading substantial books than you
can be a vigorous person physically without eating solid food.
Perusal of good books will give you a mind of your own,
bulwarked against the seduction of slogans. Through books
you escape from the ephemeral challenge of a crossword puzzle
to the actual challenge of working out the why and wherefore
of a segment of life. By borrowing the aid of a superior understanding
you double your own understanding, meeting what the writer
says with your personal thoughts.
The proper function of books is associated with intellectual
culture in which you steer clear of generalities and indefinite
views. You enlarge your critical sense regarding events and
personalities and trends, so that you are no longer at the
mercy of theorists and demagogues.
It is perfectly possible for a man, one who only gives to
reading the leisure hours of a business life, to acquire such
a general knowledge of the laws of nature and the facts of
history that every great advance made in science and government
and business shall be to him intelligible and interesting.
Choosing books
In deciding what books to read and what books to have in
your private library you need to take a wide sweep. There
is a book to match your mood whatever it may be. There are
books that are gentle and quieting, and books that are exciting
and inspiring. All that mankind has done and thought, gained
and lost: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages
of books. You should have a good selection of them within
arm's reach.
As you read, your taste will become trained so as to increase
your capacity for pleasure, enabling you to enter into a great
variety of experiences. It will reject books that are fifth—rate,
fraudulent and meretricious. You will not allow trash in books'
clothing into your library.
You will, of course, have utility books on your shelves.
There are some books which one must read if he is to progress
in his job. The man who depends only upon his own experience
is confined to narrow limits both of place and time. Non—readers
are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning
or the breadth of their thinking.
When you come to choose the general books for your library
you may be torn between buying new books and buying old books.
The good books of the hour, like the good books of all time,
contain the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you
cannot otherwise converse with. They can be very useful often,
telling you what you need to know; very pleasant often, as
a personal friend's talk would be. They may be bright accounts
of travel, good—humoured and witty discussions of events,
lively or pathetic story—telling, or firm fact—reporting
by men and women concerned in the events of passing history.
Perhaps the problem of old and new may be solved in this
way: if you have not read a book before, it is to all intents
and purposes new to you whether it was printed yesterday or
three centuries ago. Apply the tests of appropriateness, taste
and truth, and you can read ancient or modern with assurance.
Read great books
Whatever you read, read "greats". A great book is one that,
shining through time and space, lights our lives, illuminating
depths within us we were not conscious of. It is one of the
great thrills of life to uncover thoughts we did not know
we were capable of having.
All the greatest books contain food for all ages, and have
things of consequence to say to us here and now.
There is no positive hierarchy among books, but we cannot
go wrong when we peruse masterpieces. These are not designed
to rouse your admiration but to wake up your mind and spirit.
"A classic," Mark Twain said, "is something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read." The word "classical"
applied to books or music simply means what has worn best.
The consent of the ages has marked them out for all time.
Why are the classics so often recommended? Arnold Bennett
wrote in Literary Taste: "You are not in a position
to choose among modern works. To sift the wheat from the chaff
is a process that takes an exceedingly long time. Modern works
have to pass before the bar of the taste of successive generations.
" Whereas, with classics, your taste has to pass before the
bar of the classics."
Reading the classics is not to worship at the shrine of
antiquity. We do not wish to look at life through the eyes
of dead Greeks, but what those eyes saw of life is of help
in interpreting what is going on today.
Making a list
So here you are at the crucial question: what sort of books
shall I read? You cannot sail through the sea of books like
a ship without pilot or rudder.
No single person is fitted to declare which are the hundred
or thousand best books, but it is worthwhile to look at the
lists that great men in art, science, business, education
and statesmanship have made as their choices.
It is evident from these lists that whether our reading
be great or small it should be general. If the demands of
making a living leave only a short time for reading, that
is all the more reason why our reading should remind us of
the vast expanse of human thought and the wonderful variety
of human nature.
Do not go overboard about one author or one subject, however
exalted. You can become a bore if you read too much of one
kind of stuff. You may tire your companions to death with
dinosaurs, if you read exclusively about the Mesozoic period,
or you may jade your friends by falling into the poses and
speech of the characters in Dickens' novels if they become
your specialty.
Judicious reading should leave no great type of thought,
no dominant phase of human nature, wholly a blank. St. John's
College in Annapolis, Maryland, has built its course of study
around some hundred great books. They make strange shelf—fellows.
They include saints (Augustine and Aquinas); a thief (Francois
Villon); the first war correspondent (Herodotus); a surgeon
(Galen); a statesman (Cicero); a revolutionist (Marx); a traveller
(Homer); a playwright (Euripides); scientists (Aristotle,
Newton, Einstein); philosophers (Socrates, Kant, Plato); an
artist (Leonardo) and novelists (Tolstoy, Flaubert, Fielding,
Thackeray).
Fortunately, nobody can pick your books for you. You have
to do it yourself, fitting them to your needs and desires.
Any general list of books to read must necessarily be arbitrary,
but there are several guides to start your thinking. There
is a book called Have You Read 100 Great Books (Jasper
Lee Company, New York) which provides in its 144 pages fifty
lists of books, ancient and modern, every one prepared by
a respected figure in literature, history, science or education.
Selection is helped by several paperbacks: The Lifetime
Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman (Avon); Books that
Changed the World by Robert B. Downs (Mentor); Much
Loved Books by James O'Donnell Bennett (Premier); Highlights
of Modern Literature (Mentor).
From these you may make a list of books you wish to own.
Then visit the book stores and the second—hand book stores
regularly with your list in hand. When you find a book that
is on your list, at a price you wish to pay, buy it. Then
your library will be truly hand—picked, special to you.
One man, who did not wish to be bound by any ready—made
catalogue, prepared his own book and reading list in this
way: he adapted the Dewey Decimal Classification System which
was originated by Melvil Dewey to serve as a method that would
index books. The numbers you see on the backs of library books
are likely Dewey numbers: "025.8" indicates to the librarian
that the book so marked is about library administration and
has special reference to book arrangement and preservation.
The Dewey System has ten classes, every one divided and
sub—divided many times. The classes are: 000 General
works; 100 Philosophy; 200 Religion; 300 Social sciences;
400 Philology; 500 Pure science; 600 Applied science; 700
Arts and recreation; 800 Literature; 900 History.
Covering the field of knowledge
In pursuit of a general reading plan to cover all fields
of knowledge, you make sure that you obtain books in every
class. Then you follow through the classes in order, reading
a book in each.
You may read Henry David Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience"
and recall that from it Mahatma Gandhi derived his passive
disobedience régime. When Dr. Will Durant's Story
of Philosophy was published in 1926 it leaped into immediate
popularity which has continued through the years. It does
not teach you philosophy, but it does provide a chart of the
province of philosophy and leads you into many entrancing
books in which the writers discuss hopes and doubts that present
themselves with undiminished interest to every man and woman.
You will enjoy and profit by the Meditations of Marcus
Aurelius, his dispassionate gravity, his noble forgetfulness
of self, and his tenderness toward others. You will enjoy
applying the Discourses of Epictetus to modern life
as one suburban Montreal group did a few years ago. There
are surprisingly many chapters which can be read as of today,
though they were written in the first century.
When you come to the "200" class you will read the Bible
freshly like a book, not droningly and dully. This is
made simple in The Bible Designed to be Read as Living
Literature. The King James Version is retained as to text,
but the type is clear and easily read, the poems are set out
as poetry and the drama as drama. Every great religion has
its own books, and all are worth dipping into for their revelation
of the way people in all ages have satisfied their need for
spiritual expression.
When you come to science, a good book with which to start
is Science and the Modern World, by Alfred North Whitehead
(Macmillan Company, 1926; Pelican 1938). He takes you from
the first century of modern science, starting in 1600, to
this century's rejection of preconceived ideas and acceptance
of an open—minded search for secure foundations.
In the social sciences you will find books which started
great human movements, books like Capital, by Karl
Marx and The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.
In the 800 class you will read the great dramas: Agamemnon
and Oedipus Rex and Hamlet and King Lear
and Peer Gynt, which transcend all factual statement
in their illumination of the dark complexity of human dilemmas
and the ambiguity of human behaviour.
If you start your reading of history with Wells' Outline
of History you obtain not only an over—all view of
the story of mankind from the beginning up to recent years,
but an introduction to many fascinating byways to be explored
through other books.
When planning your history reading, do not omit your own
country. The New York Times said in its 1865 review
of Francis Parkman's latest book about French pioneers in
the New World: "He writes like a scholar and a gentleman,
and all who have read his History of the Conspiracy of
Pontiac - probably the most thorough and complete historical
account of a single separate act in the great drama of European
civilization that our literature has seen - will be glad to
meet him in the more extended field of investigation opened
out in this elegant volume" (France and England in North
America).
Marc Lescarbot, who wrote the drama "The Theatre of Neptune"
which was presented at Port Royal in 1606 as Canada's first
theatrical performance, was also an historian. He published
an entertaining account of the discoveries in the New World
under the title Histoire de la Nouvelle France. An
edition in English was published by the Champlain Society
in Toronto.
How to read
It is obvious that reading is not refined idleness. The
person who hopes to make something worth while out of his
reading cannot afford to disport himself in the flowery pastures
of frivolous and trivial literature. It is legitimate to read
a book for no other reason than to divert your mind from a
troublesome idea, but it need not be a sleazy book.
It is impossible to give any method to our pursuit of the
best till we get nerve enough to reject the weeds that threaten
to overgrow our little patch of fruit—bearing reading.
You will find it unprofitable to approach a book with a
blank mind and passive understanding, as one enters a cocktail
party. Between these covers are thoughts worthy of your attention,
ideas to solve your problems, inspiration that may enlighten
your life. You have seen a child turning the pages of a Christmas
catalogue, his eyes sparkling in anticipation of the new things
to be seen. That is the sort of expectancy you should bring
to your books.
Read boldly and in an unprejudiced way. Francis Bacon wrote:
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and
some few to be chewed and digested." Passive perusing may
be all very well for escape stories, but it won't do at all
for books which can improve one's mind, stir one's ambitions,
pacify one's perturbations.
Some people are deterred from attempting what are regarded
as stiff books for fear they should not understand them, but
it is wise and stimulating to read close to the upper limits
of your mental powers. Your mind is probably capable of more
than you give it credit for, if only you press it somewhat,
and accept the challenge of something a little difficult.
When you have your own books you can make reading easier,
remembering more certain, and review quicker, if you read
with pencil in hand. It is a poor objection to say "it would
spoil the book", for you did not buy the book as a dealer
to sell it again, but as a scholar. Intelligent marking gives
a kind of abstract of the book, picking out the key sentences.
Your family library
There are few hobbies more satisfying than the gradual collecting
of good books.
Possession of books does not give knowledge, but it does
make knowledge readily available. You may sit in a small home
library and see the endless procession of human thought and
passion and action as it passes. Even to build some shelves
before you begin to stock books gives you exhilaration and
excitement, because on those shelves you are going to place
books that will become part of your intellectual life and
that of your family.
When you have a number of selected books you do not need
to decide beforehand what friends you will invite to spend
the evening with you. When supper is over and you sit down
for your hour of companionship with the great writers, you
give your invitation according to your inclination at the
time. And if you have made a mistake, and the friend is, after
all, not the one you want to talk with, you can "shut him
up" without hurting his feelings. These are friends who speak
only when you want to listen, and keep silent when you want
to think.
It may not suit the décor of your living—room
to have shelves full of books there. But books are accommodating
in this regard also: they can be stacked anywhere. E. M. Forster,
author of A Passage to India, said that he had books
not only in his library but in his bedroom, in his sitting—room,
and in a bathroom cupboard.
A library is not to be regarded as a solemn chamber, but
may be some small snug corner, perhaps in the cellar, almost
entirely walled in by books. It is a place where you go to
take counsel with all that have been wise and great and good
and glorious among the men who have gone before you. It is
pleasant to sit down in that corner just being aware that
these authors, with their accumulated wisdom and charm, are
waiting for you to open a conversation.
Building such a personal library is not an expensive undertaking.
Millions of people have discovered books during the past thirty
years through the book clubs and the paperback editions. Included
are some of the very best books ever written.
No matter how tight your budget strings may be pulled, Shakespeare
and Toynbee and Franklin and Whitehead and Socrates and Santayana
and Churchill and Durant will visit you. They come dressed
in faded leather from the secondhand book store, or in paper
from the up—to—date book dealer and the railway
news stand, at the cost of less than a dollar each. They represent,
whether dressed in the brilliant finery of dust—covers
or in ragged buckram, the world's accumulated hoard of mellow
beauty and practical wisdom.
Children deserve such a library. Homes with no books, parents
who read only the daily paper and an occasional magazine,
have a negative influence upon the intellectual development
of children.
Do not waste time in deciding what books to provide for
your children: start giving them some of the best within their
understanding. Books should be chosen, not for their freedom
from evil, but for their possession of good. Dr. Johnson said:
"Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son shall read
first, another boy has read both."
Read and stock no mean books, but those which exalt and
inspire. Literature exists so that where one man has lived
finely thousands may afterwards learn to live finely. Reading
a good book makes you feel warm and comfortable inside you.
Your mind is cultivating appreciation of the excellent.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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