ON READING
ON READING
“Some people say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
[J Pearsall Smith ]
My mother’s best gift to me was a love of reading. For many years of my childhood she read me to sleep. Raggedy Andy, Biggles, Tom Brown, Captain Bligh, Tom Sawyer, Uncle Remus often accompanied me into dreamland.
Somewhere along the way I became an independent reader, assisted at a tiny northern suburbs school by some inspired teachers who fostered a love for the written word. Mr. Foxcroft encouraged us to memorise the sonnet ”On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’ and I still recall Keats’ words which are now more significant.
I never did hear Chapman speak out loud and bold, but from that time I certainly began a journey in the realms of gold, visiting many goodly states and kingdoms, rounding many western islands that Keats referred to
I changed schools in Year 11 and we had to read and review ten books for our English course. My list included Hugo’s ‘Toilers of the Sea’, Vachelle’s ‘The Hill’, Munthe’s ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rey’, and Douglas’ ‘Forgive us our Trespasses’. Dickens’ ‘Barnaby Rudge’ was considered so long that Mr. Humphries allowed me to treat it as two books. The train journey to school took about an hour each way, plenty of time to get lost is a good story, and even once to overshoot the station and have to return by the next train on the down line!
Fifty years later, I’m reading more than ever. Retirement has provided more opportunities to expand my reading horizons. What a delight to visit the local Library, order the latest books form the Readings’ catalogue and look forward to that email telling me that a book is awaiting me.
What riches I have found in a thousand books I’ve read : books about exploration, history, politics, theology, adventures of the mind as well as of the body, books about ordinary people and books about those extraordinary ones who turn things on their head….and then all those wonderful novels, by Achebe and Astley, by Brookner and Bouras, Garner and Jolley, series by McCall Smith, Le Carre, Narayan and Peters, autobiographies by Horne and Paton, by Bennett and Sheppard not to speak of that wonderful 19th century quartet of Dickens, Trollope, Hardy and , best of all , George Eliot.
I often feel like one of J,.D.Salinger’s characters , who claimed
‘What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.’
I don’t know that we need to justify reading beyond the fact that it is a pleasant experience which is enjoyable for its own sake, what Chesterton calls ‘the mere brute pleasure of reading--the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.’
However, for some people, reading is rather more problematic, often being associated with feeling guilty.
.How many can recall a scene from their youth when a harrassed mother, finding her oldest child curled up in a chair, reading, would snap, ‘ Haven’t you got anything better to do? Put that book down and come and finish your jobs.’ ?
Another source of guilt can be imposed by one’s sub-culture. In my late teens, having become serious about the Christian faith, I used to feel a little guilty about reading ‘secular’ books. ‘Christian’ books somehow seemed more worthy. Fortunately I stumbled on a book by Ruth Etchells, ’Unafraid To Be’ which encouraged me to explore the world of literature as a way of learning about life, faith and the world we live in. I soon began to realise that everything I read could contribute to my understanding of myself, and could enrich my understanding of people and the way we all relate to one another. So for the last fifty years I have plunged into reading all manner of books unafraid to discover tons of knowledge and ounces of wisdom. I want to echo Flaubert’s advice to Mme de Chanteipie, ‘Read in order to live.’
Some will say, ‘Reading is an escape.’
Of course reading is an escape It is a flight from our current perceptions of reality, a means of transcending our present mood of fear, despair, boredom or whatever other experiences may cloud our minds and feelings..
What a wonderful means of escape, what a rich source of renewal, of hope, of relief from those demons which haunt the human spirit, irrespective of age, experience or intellect..
Emily Dickinson recognizes the value of reading as an escape
‘There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
of prancing Poetry.’
The Oxford Dictionary, in one of its definitions of escape has distraction or relief from reality, esp. given by literature etc.
This ability to be distracted from reality by reading books is a sometimes neglected and often under valued means of maintaining our equilibrium and that in itself ought to justify us in turning to books more frequently.
I cannot imagine a life without books, so I was rather shocked to read a comment of E.M.Forster’s,
‘It is a mistake to think that books have come to stay. The human race did without them for thousands of years and may decide to do without them again.
Over my dead body!
Mac Nicoll
“Some people say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.”
[J Pearsall Smith ]
My mother’s best gift to me was a love of reading. For many years of my childhood she read me to sleep. Raggedy Andy, Biggles, Tom Brown, Captain Bligh, Tom Sawyer, Uncle Remus often accompanied me into dreamland.
Somewhere along the way I became an independent reader, assisted at a tiny northern suburbs school by some inspired teachers who fostered a love for the written word. Mr. Foxcroft encouraged us to memorise the sonnet ”On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’ and I still recall Keats’ words which are now more significant.
I never did hear Chapman speak out loud and bold, but from that time I certainly began a journey in the realms of gold, visiting many goodly states and kingdoms, rounding many western islands that Keats referred to
I changed schools in Year 11 and we had to read and review ten books for our English course. My list included Hugo’s ‘Toilers of the Sea’, Vachelle’s ‘The Hill’, Munthe’s ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rey’, and Douglas’ ‘Forgive us our Trespasses’. Dickens’ ‘Barnaby Rudge’ was considered so long that Mr. Humphries allowed me to treat it as two books. The train journey to school took about an hour each way, plenty of time to get lost is a good story, and even once to overshoot the station and have to return by the next train on the down line!
Fifty years later, I’m reading more than ever. Retirement has provided more opportunities to expand my reading horizons. What a delight to visit the local Library, order the latest books form the Readings’ catalogue and look forward to that email telling me that a book is awaiting me.
What riches I have found in a thousand books I’ve read : books about exploration, history, politics, theology, adventures of the mind as well as of the body, books about ordinary people and books about those extraordinary ones who turn things on their head….and then all those wonderful novels, by Achebe and Astley, by Brookner and Bouras, Garner and Jolley, series by McCall Smith, Le Carre, Narayan and Peters, autobiographies by Horne and Paton, by Bennett and Sheppard not to speak of that wonderful 19th century quartet of Dickens, Trollope, Hardy and , best of all , George Eliot.
I often feel like one of J,.D.Salinger’s characters , who claimed
‘What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.’
I don’t know that we need to justify reading beyond the fact that it is a pleasant experience which is enjoyable for its own sake, what Chesterton calls ‘the mere brute pleasure of reading--the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.’
However, for some people, reading is rather more problematic, often being associated with feeling guilty.
.How many can recall a scene from their youth when a harrassed mother, finding her oldest child curled up in a chair, reading, would snap, ‘ Haven’t you got anything better to do? Put that book down and come and finish your jobs.’ ?
Another source of guilt can be imposed by one’s sub-culture. In my late teens, having become serious about the Christian faith, I used to feel a little guilty about reading ‘secular’ books. ‘Christian’ books somehow seemed more worthy. Fortunately I stumbled on a book by Ruth Etchells, ’Unafraid To Be’ which encouraged me to explore the world of literature as a way of learning about life, faith and the world we live in. I soon began to realise that everything I read could contribute to my understanding of myself, and could enrich my understanding of people and the way we all relate to one another. So for the last fifty years I have plunged into reading all manner of books unafraid to discover tons of knowledge and ounces of wisdom. I want to echo Flaubert’s advice to Mme de Chanteipie, ‘Read in order to live.’
Some will say, ‘Reading is an escape.’
Of course reading is an escape It is a flight from our current perceptions of reality, a means of transcending our present mood of fear, despair, boredom or whatever other experiences may cloud our minds and feelings..
What a wonderful means of escape, what a rich source of renewal, of hope, of relief from those demons which haunt the human spirit, irrespective of age, experience or intellect..
Emily Dickinson recognizes the value of reading as an escape
‘There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
of prancing Poetry.’
The Oxford Dictionary, in one of its definitions of escape has distraction or relief from reality, esp. given by literature etc.
This ability to be distracted from reality by reading books is a sometimes neglected and often under valued means of maintaining our equilibrium and that in itself ought to justify us in turning to books more frequently.
I cannot imagine a life without books, so I was rather shocked to read a comment of E.M.Forster’s,
‘It is a mistake to think that books have come to stay. The human race did without them for thousands of years and may decide to do without them again.
Over my dead body!
Mac Nicoll
posted by ledingham at 3:46 PM
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