Great IdeasStories, art and words
Reading and books
How to read well, and why books matter.
The question
How should we read, and why do books matter?
How the books answer
Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.
c. 385–370 BC
Plato, Phaedrus
Plato has Socrates worry about writing. A written page can't answer your questions, he says; it just says the same thing over and over. Real learning happens in living conversation. Ironically, we know this only because Plato wrote it down.
“I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.”
c. AD 397–400
Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions
Augustine was amazed to see Bishop Ambrose reading silently, his eyes moving and his lips still, since most people read aloud. Later, a child's voice singing 'take up and read' leads him to open a book that changes his life. Reading, for him, can be a turning point.
“I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, “Take up and read;”
1580–1595
Michel de Montaigne, Essays
Montaigne reads for pleasure and for wisdom, and skips books that bore him. He borrows from the ancient writers freely but makes the ideas his own. His essays are a record of a reader thinking back at his books.
1605
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part One
Don Quixote reads so many tales of knights that he loses his grip on reality. Cervantes makes fun of bad books and of reading without judgment. Yet his book is also a love letter to stories and their power.
1625 (Essays, final edition)
Francis Bacon, Of Studies (Essays)
Bacon says some books are to be tasted, others swallowed and a few chewed and digested. We should read neither to argue nor to accept everything, but to weigh and consider. His essay is quoted on our opening rung on how to read.
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”
1644–1671
John Milton, Areopagitica, the English minor poems, Samson Agonistes
Milton calls a good book the precious lifeblood of a master spirit. To destroy one, he says, is almost like killing a person. Readers, not censors, should judge books.
“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.”
1940; 1952
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book (1940) and the Syntopicon (1952)
Mortimer Adler wrote a popular guide to reading actively: asking what a book says, whether it is true and what it means for you. He then helped build the Syntopicon, an index that lets readers compare what many great books say on one idea. These Great Ideas pages, in our own words, grew from his idea of reading books in conversation with each other.
For young readers
Books let us meet people who lived long ago and far away, and hear what they thought. Reading is a bit like time travel!
Good readers ask questions as they read: What is happening? Why did that character do that? Do I agree? Try reading a story with a grown-up and stopping to ask questions along the way.
Talk about it
- What is your favorite book? Why?
- Plato said books can't answer back. How can we 'talk' with a book?
- Bacon says some books should be tasted and some chewed. Which book would you chew slowly?
- Don Quixote believed everything in his books. Why is it important to read with judgment?
- What book would you save if you could only keep one?
Where else on the site
- Narration: Tell It Back
- Summarizing
- Reading Sources Together
- Judging Sources
- Harvard Classics Daily: fifteen minutes a day
Every rung tagged with this idea:
These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.