April 06, 2008

Perhaps the best known advice and one of the most widely quoted lines regarding selective reading is from the famous essayist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon. In his excellent essay on book study Bacon says, ‘some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested’. What he meant was that some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read but not curiously and some to be read wholly with diligence and attention.

Though young people have enough leisure to read everything which comes their way, this advice is not welcomed by the grown-ups and they acknowledge the soundness of Bacon’s advice.

If you prefer high-class language, form and style then classics are the thing for you. A good read would be of authors who are Nobel Prize and Booker Prize winners in literature.

Getting a taste of all the good books is impossible due to constraints of time and availability. You have to be content just to be introduced to them. For this purpose book reviews, appearing in reputable journals and in literary columns of newspapers come handy. Literary column writers keep you abreast with news of reprints, indicative of old books which are still popular and readable. In today’s era there is a literal gush of new editions every year or even every other week and individual efforts to find good books is difficult — rather impossible. Books compiled by big publishing houses such as Good Reading published by New American Library, contain information regarding where good books can be found and at what price, indicating paperback and cloth bound editions.

It is not very far from the truth that knowing about books is like reading them. Some compilers have collected information about books authored by ancient, medieval and modern thinkers, which have survived hundreds and thousands of years, and have been accepted as great books. The importance of such books has been judged by the impact they have had upon the human mind. For example there was a book published under the title Books that Changed the World by Downs R.B. which introduced the following books: The Prince by Machiavelli, Common Sense by Paine, Wealth of Nation by Adam Smith, Principles of Population by Malthus, Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (novel) by Beacher Stove, Das Capital by Karl Marx, The influence of Sea Power upon History by T. Mahan, The Geographical Pivot of History by Sir Mackinder, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, De-Revolutionibus Orbium Ceolestium by Copernicus, De-Motu Cordis by Harvey, Principia Mathematica by Newton, Origin of Species by Darwin, The Interpretations of Dreams by Freud and Theory of Relativity by Einstein.

In other compilations such as Books that Changed our Minds and Books that Moved the World, the following books have been introduced in addition to above: The Education of Henry Adams by Adams, Folkway by Suniner, Business Enterprise by Veblen, Studies in Logical Theory by Dewey, The Mind of Primitive Man by Boas, The Principles of Literary Criticism by Richards and The State and Revolution by Lenin. Another author has introduced the following books to his readers: Holy Quran, Holy Bible, The Republic of Plato, The City of God by Saint Augustine, The Divine Comedy of Dante, plays of Shakespeare, Pilgrim’s Progress by Bunyan and works of Darwin, Marx and Milton.

This is not to say that young book lovers should abandon reading their favourite writers. But it would benefit them to keep the names of great books in their memory and try to read them, slowly and gradually.