How do you read books? When I was young, I wanted to read everything and before one was finished the next was begun. The next book was the thing. And while I still look for what is new, I find myself very much with Bronson Alcott in this excerpt from his "Table Talk" on "Books." "Few and choice"...and old.
"ONE cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries. That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit...
Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth the reading. It is a wise book that is good from title-page to the end...
I confess to being drawn rather to the antiques, and turn with a livelier expectancy the dingy leaves, finding often inside the worn covers more for my reading than on the snowy pages of most opened by frequenters at the bookstores. I fancy that I am guided by a selecting instinct to lay my hand upon the very volume that had long been seeking my acquaintance...
An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best, and at the same time teaches the modesty of authorship...
The more life embodied in the book, the more companionable. Like a friend, the volume salutes one pleasantly at every opening of its leaves, and entertains ; we close it with charmed memories, and come again and again to the entertainment. The books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards ; we are hardly persuaded there are any like them, any deserving equally our affections. Fortunate if the best fall in our way during this susceptible and forming period of our lives.
I value books for their suggestiveness even more than for the information they may contain, works that may be taken in hand and laid aside, read at moments, containing sentences that quicken my thoughts and prompt to following these into their relations with life and things. I am stimulated and exalted by the perusal of books of this kind, and should esteem myself fortunate if I might add another to the few which the world shall take to its affections."
Blessings
