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| First Written | 2011 |
| Genre | Lit Crit |
| Origin | US |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN-10 | 0199747490 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0199747498 |
| My Copy | library copy. Marked up! |
| First Read | May 12, 2012 |
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
At one point, Jacob talks about his disdain for people who annotate in library books. I confess, I drew a (small, precise, unobtrusive) mark directly in my library copy, as I am wont to do.
Noted on May 20, 2012
Instead of just footnotes, he includes a small "Essay on Sources," which I thought was great. It's just a short writeup of each source document, instead of a simple list.
Noted on May 20, 2012
Jacobs writes about reading by Whim - an alternative or antidote to Adler's 'How to Read a Book' proscriptions. Rather than force yourself to read 'great' books, you simply try to track down books that appeal to you. He gives several strategies, my favorite of which is 'reading upstream' - finding the books that inspired or informed the authors you already love. This lines up so totally with how I actually read, that this passage, along with much of the book, felt like getting a big high five.
Noted on May 20, 2012
Once, years ago, I opened my back door and threw Chesterton's biography of Francis of Assisi as far as I could.
Quoted on May 20, 2012
[Jacobs notes one of my favorite bits from Anna Karenina] What he felt for this small being was not at all what he had expected. There was nothing happy or joyful in this feeling; on the contrary, there was a new tormenting fear. There was an awareness of a new region of vulnerability. And this awareness was so tormenting at first, the fear lest this helpless being should suffer was so strong, that because of it he scarcely noticed the strange feeling of senseless joy and even pride he had experienced when the baby sneezed.
Quoted on May 20, 2012
We love reading, we think it's wonderful, and we want other people to think so too. "What we have loved, / Others will love," wrote Wordsworth, "and we will teach them how."
Quoted on May 20, 2012
I admire this passage for several reasons, among them Simic's ability to take delight in something that has always annoyed me: annotations in library books. He convinces me that I should have more generosity of spirit, that my support of engaged reading should exceed my dislike at being distracted by readers who got to a book before I did.
Quoted on May 20, 2012
[THIS IS ME] "He had read much," Trollope says of Everett Wharton, "and though he generally forgot what he had read, there were left with him from his readings certain nebulous lights, begotten by other men's thinking, which enabled him to talk on most subjects."
Quoted on May 20, 2012
That images striking the retina can be transferred to the edge of the left occipito-temporal fissure, and there can be decoded, is extraordinary; that what is decoded there can bring tears to the eyes, or cause laughter to rise up from the diaphragm, or bring to a deeply unhappy boy cut off from his beloved mother a few hours, or many hours of joy ... I don't have words to express how deeply strange this is.
Quoted on May 20, 2012
Young people often signal through their pretensions what they hope to become: they have discerned, maybe in a limited way, some good and they are pursuing it as best they can, given limited knowledge and experience. They see people whom they admire, or are in some way attracted to, and they try to copy the references of those paragons. Such copying can lead to more and more pretension; but in many cases the pretense becomes real: the tastes we aspire to often become our own tastes. (For better or worse: this happens with whiskey, cigarettes, drugs, and sweetbreads, as well as books, with wildly variable results.)
Quoted on May 20, 2012
So this is what I say to my petitioners: for heaven's sake, don't turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of eating organic greens...
Quoted on May 20, 2012