Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-11-30
Your Winter Reading

every passing uay sees uuSh snlouu
N the streets little earlier than the
a IA day before, and arc lights CLEAN
through the haze while it is yet Tar from
supper time, the average American, reallZ,
ing that winter shortly will arrive in full
force, makes his annual resolve. This year,
he VOWS he will make good use of that leg
endary visitor 1.-The long winter evening,
and before next spring he will have read the
book or books he always meant to read.
How many bulky volumes OF Lies Mlser-
ables" will be drawn soon from dusty cor
ners and deposited on library tables? How
many copies of Shakespeare's plays Will
change their residence from the top shelf OIL
the closet to six months lease or the SIT
ting room? How many Harvard classics and
uncut histories will settle down for long
stay alongside Johnny's arithmetic and
Mary's Caesar? How many times before
spring cleaning sweeps all before it's ava
lanche, will mother demand when on earth
father is going to finish that awful book?
Perhaps father will never finish It,.
Perhaps the fire of his resolution Will be
quite burnt out before the temptations OF
theater, concert, newspaper Or just sitting
and nodding in the lazy warmth. But at
least it is most worthy resolve
Winter was ever the season for books,
were it Abraham Lincoln sooting his eyes
before the pine knots, or your more modern
youth with book in hand and slippered feet
gingerly fondling the lukewarm radiator. So
why not prescribe d course for ones sell
as November shivers into the month OF
Christmas and the long winter evenings hover
ahead?
If the taste be for fiction, it is wondrous
time for barking back to the old classics
one never did read and always intended to;
or it is a splendid opportunity for catching
step with the march of modern novels ABOUT
which one hears so much. II poetry be the
choice, the libraries and the bookstores offer
4@S,, wit hN1 o.
every verse-maker from Chaucer to Sand
burg. Again, one can travel-board barque
for the South Seas with Frederick O'Brien,
or tramp through South America with Waldo
Frank. The lives of great men and women
offer themselves for study and inspiration
one has his pick of any number of Margot
Asquiths Margaret Fullers, Theodore Roose-
velts and Benvenuto Collins, while there is
new Lincoln biography practically every
autumn. Business? There are books with
out number, from entire courses in every
commercial subject under the sun, to
weighty tones specializing highly in ones
own particular line.
Nor does the winter reader have to play
the hermit, and. huddled in his own den,
browse away the long evenings to the exclu-
sion }of the rest of the world. Perhaps the
whole family would enjoy the novel or the
travelogue. Many a man and woman, dream
ing back to childhood. remembers happy
hours, when mother or father or grand
mother read aloud evening after evening
from some absorbing narrative. and one
fairly hated to spend the night out, for that
it meant missing the most exciting chapters
Of all
There is a character in one Of Frank Nor
ris' books who, at the age Of sixty, began
to educate herself by reading the encyclo-
pedia. For several months she was at loss
did any one mention a subject under the
"M's" or the cts" but she could fairly
stun them with her information on the CAS-"
and the "B's." Eventually she went from
Aab to lizard, and could hold her own with
the best of the college professors. One
might do worse than follow her example
The long winter evenings await. How will
you use them?