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> Added to the already imposing book-mountain. :-) so little time, so much to read …

• dredmorbius 9y ago
  A notion I try to make ever-more front-of-mind: Read only worthy books. It's similar to the advice of Henry David Thoreau in Two Weeks on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, much of which in fact discusses books and ideas: It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; to read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems, and when they failed, read them again, or perchance write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer up our perfect (τελεία) thoughts to the gods daily, in hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm at least once a day. The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if no more, which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism. Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4232/4232-h/4232-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4232/4232-h/4232-h.htm I wouldn't be an absolutist on this point. But I'd note that very, very nearly all that is written is not worth reading. Including myself.