The Value of Reading

I'll be traveling to California on Thursday and back on Sunday so I'll likely have very little time to post new tidbits over the next week. Hopefully I WILL have time to finish several of the books I'm reading now, and to start some new ones too!

I can't stand not posting something new today even though there's not much to report. SO ... here are a few quotes to consider:

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting. - Aldous Huxley

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writing so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. - Socrates

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse of superior minds. ... In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. - William Ellery Channing

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch. - Augustus Hare

To me, that's what reading is all about. I want to stretch my mind, learn new things, experience other places and times ... not just be mindlessly entertained. Call me a "book snob" if you like, but I'm really picky about what I read. The book has to have some value to me in order for me to invest my time in reading it.

That's not to say that everything I read has to be true or educational. I'm a big fan of Fantasy novels, in part because they make me think outside the box. I also love Historical Fiction because it makes me question what is commonly accepted as truth in our history.

If I book can make me think, bring out something inside me that I didn't know was there (check out my review of The Mermaid Chair!), or teach me something new, then it's a good read for me!