Ted, you may be unique in the thoroughgoing organization of your reading time throughout decades, but in terms of yearning for genuine wisdom from a young age, you were never alone.
"I needed to assimilate the tradition and take some measure of the greatest works of the past before I really had any sense of what a novel or epic poem or some other masterwork was really all about."
Call me crazy (or homeschooled) but isn’t that how humanities classes are supposed to or used to work?
My older sister and I took a humanities class together in high school (again, homeschooled). We discovered that we absorbed the material much better if we read it aloud, so we read it ALL aloud together. The Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid. Gilgamesh. Shakespeare. Dante. Milton. It was an amazing experience, and it actually took less time than reading it silently alone, because we never found ourselves glazing over and reading the same sentence again and again or any of the other things that happen when you try to read something too difficult. I recommend it to everyone.
I read this article with great interest, especially “My daily reading is my proven path to Nirvana...”
When I was 18 I applied to St John’s College in Annapolis, specifically for their great books reading program. I ended up graduating from a more sensible school, the University of Minnesota. I did not forget about that list of books, however. I am now 62, undergoing cancer treatment, and, as a result, not working. I recently pulled out that list and am reading book #1 for freshmen: Homer’s Iliad. I read slowly also and am recovering from the frenetic pace of modern business reading, which is more like ultra scanning. I hope I never have to return to that anxiety provoking activity. My intent now is to savor passages and lose myself in the content.
Wow, what a cool read. As a high school senior (2 more weeks till I’m done!!) I feel something like what you articulated you felt as a teenager. I want to know… how to be a better human being. I want to know our past as a species, to know the human heart, to know the best and worst and everything in between. It’s been a struggle to continue reading as voraciously as my soul yearns to (reading during class is looked down upon, as it turns out) but I don’t think I’ll ever lose the little flame of inspiration to be a wiser human. I was that 12 year old reading Atlas Shrugged, the 13 year old reading Hayek, the 14 year old reading Aristotle (with little understanding admittedly). Completely agreed that reading at least one impossibly long/hard/intellectual book a year makes one a better person. It has taught me how to sit in confusion and accept the limited meaning I can get from something, and hope the next time I return to it I will understand more. Thanks for putting in words what I feel!
In 1963 I worked in a bookshop in London that specialized in rare, out of print, and reprints of books and pamphlets. During that period I purchased scores, (nearly my whole paycheck) of books every week. In 1963, I moved to Australia for 5 yrs. and continued buying reading, and collecting books. Fast forward to Nov. 1968, returning from Australia, when the ship reached Acapulco, and I prepared to depart, my trunks of books, and everything else I owned couldn't be found. I lost $10,000 worth of books. I didn't stop buying and reading books but I stopped collecting them and anything else. From that time onward I've used libraries and have never owned more than 10 books, which is just as well, because I've moved a lot. These days I live in Thailand and there's a used book store in town where I purchase books and trade them back for more books. At the age of 84, I don't need to own anything other than the basic necessities, among which are several copies of the Tai Te Ching, and a few others that I re-read from time to time; mostly poetry. If I had my life to live over again, I'd pursue your type of education. Thank you for your writing.
Please don't forget about audiobooks and podcasts. As my eyesight worsens and my physical dexterity decreases, audio material has become part of my new lifestyle! Nice article, Mr. Gioia. I'm showing all family and friends this piece-I am not the only one!
Reading Finnegans Wake out loud is far from foolish. After all,, Joyce himself said, “It’s all so simple. If anyone doesn’t understand a passage, all he need do is read it aloud”.
One thing I'm curious about is your approach to note-taking and retention of what you've read. You mentioned maintaining lists of book you read. Did you also make notes or create marginalia?
Ted, I think you're the bee's knees. You read my mind! I was curious about these things.b I have accumulated books over the years that are waiting on their shelves for my attention. I kind of berate myself that I'm such a slow reader and it's often frustrating because I have some imaginary comparison to some imaginary other. Thank you for spelling out a different way to think about it. Now I'll give myself a pat on the back when I read a sentence three times over. Thanks for sharing your inner world with us!
Apr 29, 2023·edited Apr 29, 2023Liked by Ted Gioia
It has been opined that intelligence may be a function of the number of pages turned . . .
That's what I think as well. Nobody in my nuclear family actually could say how I "learned to read," because nobody taught me to read. And, my mother took delight when she told her friends I could read the newspaper at age 2-3. When challenged on this, she handed me the newspaper, which of course I read easily . . .
You have won me over as a fan because I also consider reading a major human function. I struggle to read on line and recall an article (in Scientific American I think) which cited scientific studies showing that the human brain registers electronic words differently from those in hard print. I already knew this since editing my book and other articles on line always resulted in overlooking errors, to the point where I always sent my writings to my husband for reading and then printing a hard copy for me to edit. I admire the breadth of your reading choices; however, I am really puzzled at the absence of nonfiction, especially in the hard and social sciences, i.e. biology, nature,
science in general, language, anthropology, etc. For me these are, for the most part, my only reading choices aside from classic older fiction, mainly because I find that the recommendations of other people turn out to be, for me, uninteresting or lacking in heft ( my exceptions are Marquez,
Nabokov, Roth, Katharine Anne Porter, Virginia Woolf...though I read a truly great piece by
Valeria Luiselli some years ago (The Story of My Teeth). I am happy to say my granddaughter, now
in her junior year at Princeton, is majoring in literature and writing, including playwriting. When she was little and we took her out for a walk or dinner, she walked along with us reading whatever book she had started before the walk. How many people do you know like that? (I was an English major at Cornell and audited a couple of lectures by Nabokov, who read from notes, and I have no recollection of his classes whatsoever).
My Uncle John instilled a love of reading in me. He had fought in both world wars, I & II. He worked long hours translating for an import/export company in Manhattan ( he had a facility for the languages he encountered in France, Italy, Germany, Russia ). There was a newsstand where he caught the train home to Brooklyn, and it carried the Classics Illustrated “comic books”. He’d bring them home to me, pour himself a beer, and I would curl up with his arm around me and he would read me to sleep. When he realized I was picking up on reading simple words, he gave me a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales ( Modern Library edition ) for either my birthday or Christmas, don’t remember which… ( I was 4 when this began…) By the time he and my Grandmother sent me to boarding school for 1st grade I was omniverous; Sunday comics, Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine. Reading became the element that plugged up the cracks in my social skills, if nothing else.
Apr 30, 2023·edited Apr 30, 2023Liked by Ted Gioia
So great. You know, one could do the same thing with music. Start with Bach (could start earlier of course, but it's a worthwhile starting point), and go through all the "big" composers. One will learn a lot.
Ted, you may be unique in the thoroughgoing organization of your reading time throughout decades, but in terms of yearning for genuine wisdom from a young age, you were never alone.
"I needed to assimilate the tradition and take some measure of the greatest works of the past before I really had any sense of what a novel or epic poem or some other masterwork was really all about."
Call me crazy (or homeschooled) but isn’t that how humanities classes are supposed to or used to work?
My older sister and I took a humanities class together in high school (again, homeschooled). We discovered that we absorbed the material much better if we read it aloud, so we read it ALL aloud together. The Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid. Gilgamesh. Shakespeare. Dante. Milton. It was an amazing experience, and it actually took less time than reading it silently alone, because we never found ourselves glazing over and reading the same sentence again and again or any of the other things that happen when you try to read something too difficult. I recommend it to everyone.
I read this article with great interest, especially “My daily reading is my proven path to Nirvana...”
When I was 18 I applied to St John’s College in Annapolis, specifically for their great books reading program. I ended up graduating from a more sensible school, the University of Minnesota. I did not forget about that list of books, however. I am now 62, undergoing cancer treatment, and, as a result, not working. I recently pulled out that list and am reading book #1 for freshmen: Homer’s Iliad. I read slowly also and am recovering from the frenetic pace of modern business reading, which is more like ultra scanning. I hope I never have to return to that anxiety provoking activity. My intent now is to savor passages and lose myself in the content.
Here’s the list: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list
Wow, what a cool read. As a high school senior (2 more weeks till I’m done!!) I feel something like what you articulated you felt as a teenager. I want to know… how to be a better human being. I want to know our past as a species, to know the human heart, to know the best and worst and everything in between. It’s been a struggle to continue reading as voraciously as my soul yearns to (reading during class is looked down upon, as it turns out) but I don’t think I’ll ever lose the little flame of inspiration to be a wiser human. I was that 12 year old reading Atlas Shrugged, the 13 year old reading Hayek, the 14 year old reading Aristotle (with little understanding admittedly). Completely agreed that reading at least one impossibly long/hard/intellectual book a year makes one a better person. It has taught me how to sit in confusion and accept the limited meaning I can get from something, and hope the next time I return to it I will understand more. Thanks for putting in words what I feel!
You cannot imagine how much I needed to read this.
In 1963 I worked in a bookshop in London that specialized in rare, out of print, and reprints of books and pamphlets. During that period I purchased scores, (nearly my whole paycheck) of books every week. In 1963, I moved to Australia for 5 yrs. and continued buying reading, and collecting books. Fast forward to Nov. 1968, returning from Australia, when the ship reached Acapulco, and I prepared to depart, my trunks of books, and everything else I owned couldn't be found. I lost $10,000 worth of books. I didn't stop buying and reading books but I stopped collecting them and anything else. From that time onward I've used libraries and have never owned more than 10 books, which is just as well, because I've moved a lot. These days I live in Thailand and there's a used book store in town where I purchase books and trade them back for more books. At the age of 84, I don't need to own anything other than the basic necessities, among which are several copies of the Tai Te Ching, and a few others that I re-read from time to time; mostly poetry. If I had my life to live over again, I'd pursue your type of education. Thank you for your writing.
"How does a jazz musician know so much about Aristotle"?
They're not supposed to be well-read on subjects other than music? News to me.
And I know that Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, who were both well read and outspoken, would likely disagree with that as well.
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
Mark Twain
You have discovered and practiced the above.
Education, and particularly higher education, should prepare students on how to learn about a myriad of subjects.
I call it learning how to learn. A skill that will last a lifetime.
Thanks Ted!
Please don't forget about audiobooks and podcasts. As my eyesight worsens and my physical dexterity decreases, audio material has become part of my new lifestyle! Nice article, Mr. Gioia. I'm showing all family and friends this piece-I am not the only one!
Reading Finnegans Wake out loud is far from foolish. After all,, Joyce himself said, “It’s all so simple. If anyone doesn’t understand a passage, all he need do is read it aloud”.
One thing I'm curious about is your approach to note-taking and retention of what you've read. You mentioned maintaining lists of book you read. Did you also make notes or create marginalia?
Ted, I think you're the bee's knees. You read my mind! I was curious about these things.b I have accumulated books over the years that are waiting on their shelves for my attention. I kind of berate myself that I'm such a slow reader and it's often frustrating because I have some imaginary comparison to some imaginary other. Thank you for spelling out a different way to think about it. Now I'll give myself a pat on the back when I read a sentence three times over. Thanks for sharing your inner world with us!
It has been opined that intelligence may be a function of the number of pages turned . . .
That's what I think as well. Nobody in my nuclear family actually could say how I "learned to read," because nobody taught me to read. And, my mother took delight when she told her friends I could read the newspaper at age 2-3. When challenged on this, she handed me the newspaper, which of course I read easily . . .
You have won me over as a fan because I also consider reading a major human function. I struggle to read on line and recall an article (in Scientific American I think) which cited scientific studies showing that the human brain registers electronic words differently from those in hard print. I already knew this since editing my book and other articles on line always resulted in overlooking errors, to the point where I always sent my writings to my husband for reading and then printing a hard copy for me to edit. I admire the breadth of your reading choices; however, I am really puzzled at the absence of nonfiction, especially in the hard and social sciences, i.e. biology, nature,
science in general, language, anthropology, etc. For me these are, for the most part, my only reading choices aside from classic older fiction, mainly because I find that the recommendations of other people turn out to be, for me, uninteresting or lacking in heft ( my exceptions are Marquez,
Nabokov, Roth, Katharine Anne Porter, Virginia Woolf...though I read a truly great piece by
Valeria Luiselli some years ago (The Story of My Teeth). I am happy to say my granddaughter, now
in her junior year at Princeton, is majoring in literature and writing, including playwriting. When she was little and we took her out for a walk or dinner, she walked along with us reading whatever book she had started before the walk. How many people do you know like that? (I was an English major at Cornell and audited a couple of lectures by Nabokov, who read from notes, and I have no recollection of his classes whatsoever).
My Uncle John instilled a love of reading in me. He had fought in both world wars, I & II. He worked long hours translating for an import/export company in Manhattan ( he had a facility for the languages he encountered in France, Italy, Germany, Russia ). There was a newsstand where he caught the train home to Brooklyn, and it carried the Classics Illustrated “comic books”. He’d bring them home to me, pour himself a beer, and I would curl up with his arm around me and he would read me to sleep. When he realized I was picking up on reading simple words, he gave me a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales ( Modern Library edition ) for either my birthday or Christmas, don’t remember which… ( I was 4 when this began…) By the time he and my Grandmother sent me to boarding school for 1st grade I was omniverous; Sunday comics, Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine. Reading became the element that plugged up the cracks in my social skills, if nothing else.
So great. You know, one could do the same thing with music. Start with Bach (could start earlier of course, but it's a worthwhile starting point), and go through all the "big" composers. One will learn a lot.