Books--and the Company We Keep

Reading, while exceedingly important, is not an objective in itself. We should read for knowledge, for content and meaning, considering the substance and asking ourselves: Who wrote that and why? Is it true or false? Is it wholesome or morbid? Is it poisonous, polluted? What is its impact, its impression, its message? It what direction does it move men?

“I have often been astonished,” said John Lubbock, “how little care people devoted to the selection of what they read. And yet many…read almost by hazard. They will take any books they chance to find in a room at a friend’s house; they will by a novel at a railway stall if it has an attractive title; indeed, I believe in some cases even the binding affects their choice.”

James Bryce recalls that “Goethe once said of someone, ‘He is a dull man. If he were a book, I would not read him.'” And to this quotation to Goethe, Bryce added: “When you find that book is poor, …waste no more time upon it.”

Ruskin writes of books as friends—and also as opportunities for appointments with people whose lives and thoughts are of surpassing importance. “We may, by good fortune,” he said, “obtain a glimpse of great poet and hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man of science…or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a Princess, …meantime there is a society continually open for us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like…talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society…can be kept waiting round us all day long—kings and statesmen [and prophets, he might have added] lingering patiently…in our bookcase shelves…Books…have been written in all ages by the greatest men:–by great readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. They are all at your choice;…Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy…when all the while this eternal court is open to you…wide as the world,…[with] the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship.”

Surely there must be a better reason for reading anything than the mere fact that it appears in print. We should “seek…out of the best books…wisdom”—not the false, the mediocre, the shallow, the sensational, but the best. “The worth of a book is to be measured by what can you carry away from it…” As Sydney Smith said: “Live always in the best company when you read.”