The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-05-30
Profitable Reading.

AZ : AAC :1Hqulfy ZOE llSrS or ''best BOOKS" is
not 50 vigorous as 1t was awhile ago. The
business Of furnishing lists has been some
what overdone. The list-makers have
not all been equal to the task. Some OF
them mistook the age they live in and in
cluded too many conventional and solid
Engllsh masterpieces" Even Sir John
Lubbock's list showed that he did not APP
preciate the situation. He and others who
have tried their hands at listing s'best
books have apparently failed to note the
tendency to absorb books Of biography and
travel.
There have been however. some very
excellent lists of best books of English
literature made. both in England and in
this country. They have been very useful.
too. Under the current conditions when
the presses of the publishers are running
hot with copious issues of books, good, bad
or Indifferent; when SO many people, in
capable OF successful mental effort, are
coaxed by the stories Of publishers about
successful nove1ists to enter the field and
write the great American novel;; when,
ASIDE from fiction. nature books, biogra-
ph1es, histories and scientific books
G1nade easy are issued in enormous
mbers-under such conditions, the in
curing readers, young or mature, need
some Judgment from experienced and dis
eliminating readers as to the merits Of
publications in every field. Desultory
and superficial snatchy reading, the dip
ping into books, as it is called has a de-
11aoralizinES effeet. Turning some people
into a large, miscellaneous library is like
turning hungry COW into a field of rich
clover or an allurfng growth of succulent
corn. The animal is in Imminent peril Of
foundering. Petrarch wrote: Books have
brought some men to knowledge and some
to madness. AS fullness sometimes hurt
eth the stomach more than hunger, so far
eth IT with arts; and as Of meats, SO like
wise Of books, the use ought to be limited
according to the quality Of him that useth
them In Petrarc1's time there we're no
roaring printing machines turning out
books by the million. The books Of that
period We're comparatively few in number,
and they who read and studied them.
10 IVY ~ C11OOSe from, read and stud
led them with heroic purpose and with
mental profit. There were no undigested
books in those days. Petrarch's advice is
certainly as sound to-day as it was in the
fourteenth century Inquiring readers
who want to read for profit ought to be
directed to the books which can be read
lily d1gested and furnish the mental appa,-
ratus with red blood. There are multi
tudes Of books written on the same sub.
ject. Books of science in this age Of the
revision and restatements of science by
reason Of new discoveries. are "best', when
they are intellisently up to date His
tory can only be proftably studied in con-
nection with contemporary memoirs and
biographies. And so on. Thus one who
would be serious reader and one with
good mental digestion. is better off with a
few carefully selected books on the topic
he is studying than if he were the pos
SCISSOR of a library Of 1000 volumes. Read
ing need not be voluminous, but thinking
upon the thing read ought always to be
long and penetrat IA 49,. III &