“Excessive reading is bad for thinking. The most distinguished thinkers I have ever met have been just those of my learned acquaintances who have read the least.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Reflections (1844)
At its most recent meeting, the Editorial Board of the Orthosphere decided to jointly publish an essay on the best books its members had read in 2021. The resolution provoked in me, as similar resolutions had provoked in years past, a bashful consciousness that I had read very little in 2021, and that much of what I did read was trash.
I was at one time a tiger for reading, not to mention a sabre-tooth tiger of ambition to appear well-read. But nowadays, when it comes to books, I am more like a puppy that sniffs, tentatively paws, yaps twice, and then lopes away in search of lunch.
Because I have no head for science, and no stomach for technology, there is little to tempt me in what others assure me are the fruits of modern thought. When it comes to those things for which I have both head and stomach, modern thought appears to offer little but turds, toadstools and tumescence. At least this is what I am pleased to think now that I have reached the age of heavy eyelids and an easily fatigued brain.
I cannot recover the source, but I once somewhere read the opinion that one must read a great many books to learn how many books are not worth reading. Stated somewhat differently, one must waste a great deal of time reading to learn that a great deal of reading is a great waste of time.
What I just wrote is a paradox, of course, since learning a lesson that must be learned is never a waste of time. And learning that most books are as falsely seductive as bawdy women is one of those lessons that must be learned.
* * * * *
I do not say that all books are worthless, or maintain that men can grow wise as simple children of nature; but I do know, as a recovering bookwork, that excessive reading is no more wholesome, and no more meritorious, than excessive drinking, excessive eating, or excessive carnal enjoyment.
Indeed, over-reading (a valuable word) has ill effects similar to other overindulgences, because it so often induces lethargy, spleen and ennui.
And the vice of over-reading is more insidious than many other vices because so many books have been written to persuade men enslaved to reading that their weakness is a badge of honor. A drunkard will hide his bottles. A glutton will suck in his gut. But a voracious reader! Ye gods! He most closely resembles the womanizer who boasts of his tally of whores.
* * * * *
I have now twice likened books to bawdy women, the first time because many books are falsely seductive, promising what they cannot supply, and the second time because many voracious readers are under the quantitative delusion that better is synonymous with more.
You will not find wisdom by simply sticking your nose in hundreds of books—no more than you will find love by simply sticking your ——- in hundreds bawds.
You will find wisdom by wedding yourself to a short shelf of books, just as you will find love by wedding yourself to one wife. This is evident if you compare a man who has studied nothing but his Bible (or his Plato) with a man who has acquired syphilis and strange perversions in the bawdy house of a large library.
* * * * *
Here are some strictures on voracious reading from the satirical German aphorist, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799). They are taken from his Reflections, which was first published in 1844, and first translated into English in 1908.
“I suspect that some of the greatest geniuses that ever lived neither read half so much nor knew anything like as much as some of our mediocre scholars. What is more, not a few of our mediocre scholars might have become greater men if they had only not read so much.”
I am myself a mediocre scholar who has now acquired the abstemious reading habits of Lichtenberg’s greatest geniuses. I shudder to think how much more mediocre I would be if I had not, in middle age, developed a profound distaste for “the literature” of my field. If I had not outgrow the voracity I had been taught in graduate school, I might be today a creaking encyclopedia of once-fashionable cant.
“What with our premature and often only too excessive reading, whereby we accumulate much information without digesting it . . . . what with this, I say, it needs a profound philosophy . . . to find one’s way out of the mass of alien thoughts; to begin to feel, to speak, and I might almost say, to exist for oneself.”
There is no profit in reading if the reader is nothing but an open maw, gulping information without stopping to chew and digest. And there has been no profit in reading if the reader does not one day grow into his own man with his own opinions. We are men, not parrots, and a grown man who still pipes borrowed opinions is what St. Paul meant by a tinkling cymbal and a sounding brass.
“The ages when people begin to study the rules by which other ages managed to accomplish such great things, are ages in a poor way. Instead of having good digestions and keen powers of invention, the best minds become terribly well-read, pale, consumptive stay-at-homes.”
This aphorism cuts a little close to this reader of old books and believer in permanent things, but I know that what Lichtenberg says is often true. Explorers do not follow marked trails, and there is a bad sort of philology that is beloved by only vampires and ghouls. This is why it is all too easy to become “terribly well read.”
“There is a certain kind of book, extremely numerous in Germany, which do not, indeed, scare us from reading them, or send us off to sleep immediately, or stupefy us, but which after about an hour’s time reduce the mind to a certain condition of lassitude . . .
I have been very often pummeled into this demoralized lassitude by a book of just this sort, a book that was not obviously bad, or boring, but that nevertheless sapped my vitals and made the world go grey.
If we lay the book aside, we are not in the mood to study anything; if we begin to write, we write in just the same style ourselves; even if we at once begin to read the best books they seem to acquire a tepid tastelessness . . .
Whatever the ostensible subject of this sort of book, its subliminal message after, an hour’s time reading, is existential nihilism. The question that it forms in the reader’s mind is, in what sort of a universe could men write, much less attempt to read, a book of the dead such as this one? The answer that immediately reports for duty is, a very sad universe indeed.
Fortunately, Lichtenberg suggests one antidote to the demoralized lassitude that comes of reading these books of the dead:
I know from personal experience that against this sad condition there is no specific like a cup of coffee and a pipe.
The Orthosphere 
A scotch and a cigar work even better.
Anything that reminds one that reality is not made of words.
This is what the Orthosphere is for–challenging contemporary assumptions. Books do the same thing as television and smartphones–drown out one’s own thought processes. I’ve noticed that in my more creative spells (compared to my sluggish norm), I become uninterested in reading. When the well of my own thoughts runs dry, I turn again to the written thoughts of others. I have stayed there too long and haven’t had an interesting thought in years.
I admit that the reason I suggested a “favorite books” post is because I enjoy reading other people write about books they like.
I feel the same vampire tendency in myself, and it grows stronger as my creative juices dry up. A “great reader” with a poor memory is a very dull dog. A “great reader” with a good memory may be amusing, but is more often a bore. What is wanted is a “great reader” who is incisive or witty, and I’d guess that reading tends to dull the last two traits.
Seneca the Younger:
My friend, “Hambone” found this quote some time ago. Ive always been envious of good readers mostly because I enjoy reading as a hobby, the same way I enjoy playing baseball, or drawing, but I dont have (or allow) time for any of these hobbys these days. Your article made me feel better about not indulging in at least one of them.
The thought of investing deeply into a few books strikes me as good advice too. If you had to pick 5 books to read for the rest of your life, and read no others, which would they be? Its a tough question to chew on.
That’s a good and apposite quote. The advice is hard for a young man to follow because he is acutely aware of his ignorance and wants to understand everything very quickly. That’s why he reads much like he eats (and in many cases drinks)–by gulping. I’d guess that this is in the nature of things and no one bypasses this stage. I’m a terrible one for lists of favorites and I tend to draw blanks when people ask me what they should read. My main advice would be, don’t read a book you don’t like unless you have to, don’t be afraid to skim the dull parts, or stop before the end, and don’t neglect to re-read those you love best.
1. the Bible (with Deuterocanonicals),
2. Dhammapada-Suttanipatta,
3. Sun Tzu
4. a Collection of Robert E Howard stories
5. Koran (so I can debate Muslims)
Not really hard.
“. . . if you compare a man who has studied nothing but his Bible (or his Plato) with a man who . . .”
At a meeting with the graduate student lecturers, our teaching mentor, who happened to be a PhD and a religious (but humbly just went by Sister), asked which single book we would like to have if we were stranded in isolation on an island. Pretty much everyone said the Bible or the Republic — and then one fellow objected to the Republic and its heathenism. The kind sister gave him a curt, deadly serious response . . . a verbal punch in the face. I cannot remember what exactly she said (perhaps something about the dialogue’s manifesting the foundation of Western thought), but I much enjoyed it. Besides those two inspired texts, throw in some George Eliot and Dostoevsky, and that would suffice. And maybe Augustine or Dickens. I won’t include Shakespeare. I really like to watch actors’ perform Shakespeare’s plays, but I’m not a great fan of reading. My soul is too prosaic for pure poetry.
To be perfectly honest, P.G. Wodehouse is the author I re-re-re-re-read. It’s the glass of warm milk that I drink before falling asleep. If I were to be stranded on a desert island, I think I’d take an early edition of the Boy Scout Handbook, or perhaps Robinson Crusoe.
Pingback: (k) – Five Books – Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth
I once read (that vice again!) of a Swedish man who read Wodehouse and was inspired to become a Roman Catholic, although I don’t believe Wodehouse was himself.
I have never looked too closely into Wodehouse’s personal life, but his fiction contains naught but Anglican vicars. I recall one atheist policeman in the novel The Mating Season, but his atheism is represented as ridiculous, and he “sees the light” in the end. Perhaps Wodehouse led this man to Evelyn Waugh, who admired and in some ways copied Wodehouse, and Waugh led him to the Church.
Bad memes. Lodge themselves in this way in the minds of Men and Women this way.
After all intellectuals are the most ardent communists:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/10/suicide-of-the-liberals
This reminds me we ought to have a collective noun for liberals and related groups, like we use for groups of animals, such as a pack of wolves, or a murder of crows. And a ‘suicide of liberals’ would be perfect. Example usage:
“How was the dinner party that your wife’s friend hosted?”
“Food was great, but the suicide of liberals that is my wife’s friends made me want to kill myself.”
Another example: we could refer to one of those celebration of sodomy parades as a ‘pride of pathics’.
The word coven would seem to fit.
Pingback: Sunday Morning Coffee 01/16/2022 – A Mari Usque Ad Mare
Certain books, at certain times, minister to me. I read them as if holding to a lifeline. They give me what I need most at those times.
In my youth, I needed those books, and eventually I found them. Now that I am older and more stable, the need is less. In the recent Crisis of 1/6 and All That, I found websites more than books to minister to me.
Overall, though, I agree with the post. Too much unnecessary reading leads to mischief or boredom.
After my party / juvenile delinquency years dried up sometime in my early-to-mid 20s, I found myself, like many Millennials, fairly socially isolated. So I began to read– a lot. Now I have an entire wall’s worth of books in my living room.
To be quite honest, I’m honestly not sure if I actually gained a whole lot from all that reading. I mean, all that reading, studying different ideas, religions, philosophies, etc eventually led me to the conclusion that Orthodox Christianity was the only legit way to orient your life if you’re a Westerner living in the encroaching hellscape that is 2022 America.
I guess one might say it ended up leading me towards Truth via Sherlock Holmes approach, something like (paraphrasing from memory): “when you discount all the things that couldn’t possibly be true, whatever’s left must be the truth”.
It was funny, when I started going to church, several people there recommended XYZ books for me to “learn about the faith”. I responded basically something to the effect of, that at a certain point, a teacup reaches maximum capacity and any excess just runs down the sides, and that COMMITTING to something and EXPERIENCING it will benefit some types more than just reading more books. They agreed.
Most of our ancestors were illiterate, but its hard to argue that they were “worse” than us– they were both physically stronger, more robust, and had FAR SUPERIOR memory. This SWPL / bugman tier idea of “books = good” and “more books = more good” is kind of a tell which illustrates the midwit-tier intellect of these types of people.
The vast majority of books aren’t really even worth reading and the vast majority of people aren’t going to take anything away from reading them, EVEN IF they read only legit books. Its like when you hear parents complain that schools aren’t teaching “critical thinking”, its a very big tell about how they view the Human mind: MOST PEOPLE aren’t capable of critical thinking, and the ones who are, are going to think critically even if the establishment tries to stamp that out– its not something that can be taught, basically you either have “it” or you don’t.
Also, reading a lot, even being well read on a variety of subjects, isn’t going to automatically make you a BETTER PERSON. I’ve read far more than most, despite my age, and yet, looking back at my life, I was a totally deprived and degenerate person with a list of vices that would make my peasant ancestors from the Old Country blush with ashamedness. If anything, reading a lot, as the OP essay states, can actually make an intelligent and “critical thinking” person MORALLY WORSE, as it provides much ammunition in-which one can use to hand-waive away any attempts at fruitful self-criticism or actual fulfillment by blaming his problems on others or escaping away into a world of intellectualist fantasies.
Like you, I’ve read a great many books and am at this very moment sitting in a room lined with books, so it may seem hypocritical for me to deprecate reading and books. I certainly do not mean to encourage philistine illiteracy. Books may be the only way for a young man to find his way in a culture that has no tradition and is mostly degenerate rubbish. But, sooner or later one should come to understand that over-reading is as real as overeating, and that the resulting literary obesity is unsightly.