Sundry Reading Days

 

As laughter here breeds laughter, there above sheer happiness shoots brilliant flares. Below, a darkening shadow marks the saddened mind.

- Paradiso, Canto 9, Dante

Readers read together and alone. The beauty of reading is that it can be solo, or you can read with others either at the same time, aloud, or silently. If you are like me attached to the physical book (the wonderful feeling, smell, texture, essence of the book itself), batteries will not run out, no books will run out of charge. No books will kick you out when your subscription time has elapsed. In fact, books invite you in - to deeper understanding, learning, and perspective. Inviting you to linger on the pages. 

Reader, are you constantly looking for more time to read? Etching out our schedule so that you squeeze a few hours (or more) into weekends to read? Cast aside other plans to read? Decide not to go out because you'd rather read? Ask everyone you know what they are reading? Ponder to yourself how anyone could think there was such a thing as too much reading? 

If you are wondering why someone would want to read so much, it's a fact of sundry reading that you get a wide variety of books to enjoy and learn from. Last weekend I finished reading Plato's Phaedrus, his take on friendship, and then finished reading The Divine Comedy by Dante in a modern translation I had not read before and loved it. Then I summed up last week by reading The Early Church by Henry Chadwick, which starts from the beginning of the church in the ancient world and into the first few centuries AD. Then, just for fun I threw in Die with Zero by Bill Perkins, a book about living experiences now to build up memory dividends and not waiting for some future date, and also My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff, a memoir of a young women in NYC entering into the literary agent world in the 1990s. 

In this delicious stew of books, we have philosophy, fiction/poetry, history, business/finance, and non-fiction. From ancient BC writings, to the current modern day ideas. I would argue that you cannot get this robust flavor or serendipitous compilation of ideas and thought-provoking encounters except by exploring the world of books and allowing such meetings to occur, mix, and provide a plethora of musings.

Perhaps you think me too fastidious to place such importance onto books and these chance encounters. But I would come back and say that books talk to one another across time, space, and my tiny apartment. C.S. Lewis is always referencing ancient writers and I go to my shelf to grab that book to read. Dante seeks wisdom as his mentor Virgil comes out of the ancient world to guide him. Books reference one another, play off one another, build off older ideas, describe ideas in context of today. The more I read, the more I learn about to read more from the references. Who were your authors reading? How did they formulate their ideas?  It's a cycle of research I am very glad to get on and around every corner there is a whole new shelf of authors to discover.