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Feb 19, 2024 · This article cuts straight to the point: why it’s essential to read old books, the invaluable classics, and how to weave them into the rhythm of modern reading habits. Discover the insights and experiences that have shaped centuries of thought and continue to resonate without the fluff.
- Read Old Books to Better Understand People
- Read Old Books to Reassess The Modern World
- Read Old Books to Join Great Conversations
- Read Old Books Because They Call to You
- What’s Old Is New Again
One barrier to reading older books is the thought that such works are obsolete. To live your life, you don’t need to understand the intricacies of medieval Chinese warfare, the struggles of the Victorian working class, or the myths of people who honestly thought a giant serpent enveloped the world. But the truth is that older books can still offer ...
Even with that mindset, we may still find the ideas of old books to be silly, bigoted, or simply wrongheaded. However, it’s important to remember that the authors of these books were shaped by their time, culture, and the collective knowledge of their era. They were unable to see their biases and assumptions, which are now clear to us thanks to the...
Lewis adds that only reading modern books is like trying to join a conversation halfway through. Yes, you can jump in and may do a passable job engaging. However, you will have a much better command if you join the conversation from the beginning. Older books preserve these conversational threads so we can do just that. This is essentially what the...
The previous reasons are ultimately meaningless if we don’t find reading old books gratifying. Otherwise, why bother taking one off the shelf? Thankfully, old books can be fun. They can also be inspiring, terrifying, rewarding, challenging, exhilarating, and provocative. They can instill in us not only knowledge and wisdom but the full range of hum...
Returning to our thought experiment above, it is counterproductive to feel guilty when you pass over older books in favor of something more recent. Those current events, pressing issues, and living artists need our attention, too. A good rule of thumb, one I borrowed from Lewis, is to make every third or fifth read a classic or much older book. And...
Feb 20, 2024 · Must-Read Classics. The best classic novels remain relevant and accessible decade after decade. Classic literature is not a genre—it encompasses romance, science fiction, humor and any other...
- Toni Fitzgerald
May 26, 2022 · Everyone loves a classic novel, but where to start? From Jane Austen to Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison to Fyodor Dostoevsky, the fiction canon is so vast you can easily get lost in it. So we asked our readers to tell us about their favourite classic books.
Oct 31, 2023 · While there are several reasons to read old books, here are a few that you must know as a bibliophile: A blast from the past: When you read books that are old, it gives you a blast from the...
- Author
Nov 17, 2022 · In literature, the popularity of “annotated editions” of various classics shows how much we still value basic contextual information about earlier historical periods — and, paradoxically ...
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Apr 1, 2022 · Old books are worthy of our attention. Dr. D. T. Sheffler explains why in this article from the Spring 2022 edition of the Classical Teacher.