A while back I saw tweet from an account called something like 'Library Mindset', bearing book recommendations from various CEOs.
The recommendations were, of course, a tyre fire. But I won't talk about that in this post. You'd already guessed at the tyre fire when you hit the word 'CEOs'.
Rather: some opinions about reading and gathering books.
A personal library should—should ideally—range wide, stay unembarrassed, and spend some of its time rowing against the canon.
I feel some pride in the fact that mine includes the twelfth-century Poema morale alongside Machikado Mazoku. (Images above.) I feel more pride in the juxtaposition than in either item alone.
It's good to own some books you haven't read:
- Now you have things to read in an emergency.
- Some books are tools. I flit through many of my work books, raiding them. Read scholastically as well as monastically.
Not all reading needs somehow to improve you:
- You're not an asset, you're a person.
- 'Learn everything; afterwards, you'll see that nothing's unnecessary.' ('omnia disce. videbis postea nihil esse superfluum.')
Making sure you're doing some reading, somehow, beats agonising over failing to read for a full three hours a day.
- Fifteen minutes before you crash? That's fifteen more than zero.
- Audiobooks? Great! (And very traditional.)
Use actual real communal libraries, if you're lucky enough to be near any! A library system will always outclass your collection—unless you're too wealthy to be reading this—and that outclassing is healthy and good.
And fight for libraries, when and where you can. Every day, librarians go to work and try to make sure that children learn and that our species doesn't forget. Usually they do this without the money and time they need.
