Apparently, this little volume which packs an intellectual punch is actually part of a three-part series. The first part is one of my favorite books on reading—The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction—and the second, How to Think, I skipped because I didn’t realize the series existed. Anyway, I’m certain these books don’t need to be read in order. I really appreciate Alan Jacobs’s commonsensical approach to reading and thinking. In this book, he’s making an argument about the value of reading old books, in response to a belief that people aren’t so interested in what authors of the past have to say anymore, especially when it’s tinged with or even steeped in racism, classism, misogyny, etc., etc. Anyone who feels that way seems to me unlikely to pick up Jacobs’s book in the first place, but maybe they will. Like, I would imagine, most of you, I’m perfectly willing to read old stuff, but I’ll happily go along for this ride. “Breaking bread with the dead,” Jacobs writes, “is not a scholarly task to be completed but a permanent banquet, to which all who hunger are invited.” I’ve been reading Breaking Bread in little bites at bedtime, without taking notes, and I feel as if I’m going to have to turn right back around at the end and reread it, pen in hand, in order to really appreciate Jacobs.
What are you reading this week? Let us know in the comment section below!
That's been on my TBR! I'm halfway through I Cheerfully Refuse.
Reminds me of How To Read a Book, which I enjoyed many years ago - I'll have to look it up. This week I am reading The Kingdom of Prep: The Inside Story of the Rise and (Near) Fall of J. Crew by Maggie Bullock, who has edited at Vouge and ELLE and this book read like that. I could nitpick the title and other things, but it did remind me of this one J. Crew suit I still have in my closet next to Ralph, Calvin, and Tommy and I don't a tenth of the nostalgia for those guys that I have for the old J. Crew.