The Guide to Reading | Page 9

have not begun to
read, you have not learned how to read.
We have said enough, perhaps, of the theories of reading. The one
lesson that seems most obvious is that we must come close to literature.

HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT OF BOOKS
By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
One is sometimes asked by young people panting after the waterbrooks
of knowledge: "How shall I get the best out of books?" Here indeed, is
one of those questions which can be answered only in general terms,
with possible illustrations from one's own personal experience.
Misgivings, too, as to one's fitness to answer it may well arise, as
wistfully looking round one's own bookshelves, one asks oneself:
"Have I myself got the best out of this wonderful world of books?" It is
almost like asking oneself: "Have I got the best out of life?"
As we make the survey, it will surely happen that our eyes fall on many
writers whom the stress of life, or spiritual indolence, has prevented us
from using as all the while they have been eager to be used; friends we
might have made yet never have made, neglected counsellors we would
so often have done well to consult, guides that could have saved us
many a wrong turning in the difficult way. There, in unvisited corners
of our shelves, what neglected fountains of refreshments, gardens in
which we have never walked, hills we have never climbed!
"Well," we say with a sigh, "a man cannot read everything; it is life that
has interrupted our studies, and probably the fact is that we have
accumulated more books than we really need." The young reader's
appetite is largely in his eyes, and it is very natural for one who is born

with a taste for books to gather them about him at first indiscriminately,
on the hearsay recommendation of fame, before he really knows what
his own individual tastes are, or are going to be, and in that wistful
survey I have imagined, our eyes will fall, too, with some amusement,
on not a few volumes to which we never have had any really personal
relation, and which, whatever their distinction or their value for others,
were never meant for us. The way to do with such books is to hand
them over to some one who has a use for them. On our shelves they are
like so much good thrown away, invitations to entertainments for
which we have no taste. In all vital libraries, such a process of
progressive refection is continually going on, and to realize what we do
not want in books, or cannot use, must, obviously, be a first principle in
our getting the best out of them.
Yes, we read too many books, and too many that, as they do not really
interest us, bring us neither benefit nor diversion. Even from the point
of view of reading for pleasure, we manage our reading badly. We
listlessly allow ourselves to be bullied by publishers' advertisements
into reading the latest fatuity in fiction, without, in one case out of
twenty, finding any of that pleasure we are ostensibly seeking. Instead,
indeed, we are bored and enervated, where we might have been
refreshed, either by romance or laughter. Such reading resembles the
idle absorption of innocuous but interesting beverages, which cheer as
little as they inebriate, and yet at the same time make frivolous
demands on the digestive functions. No one but a publisher could call
such reading "light." Actually it is weariness to the flesh and heaviness
to the spirit.
If, therefore, our idea of the best in books is the recreation they can so
well bring; if we go to books as to a playground to forget our cares and
to blow off the cobwebs of business, let us make sure that we find what
we seek. It is there, sure enough. The playgrounds of literature are
indeed wide, and alive with bracing excitement, nor is there any limit to
the variety of the games. But let us be sure, when we set Out to be
amused, that we really are amused, that our humorists do really make
us laugh, and that our story-tellers have stories to tell and know how to
tell them. Beware of imitations, and, when in doubt, try Shakespeare,

and Dumas--even Ouida. As a rule, avoid the "spring lists," or "summer
reading." "Summer reading" is usually very hot work.
Hackneyed as it is, there is no better general advice on reading than
Shakespeare's--
No profit is where is no pleasure taken,
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Not only in regard to books whose purpose, frankly, is recreation, but
also in regard to the graver uses of books, this counsel no less holds.
No reading does