Friday 10 August 2012

Alan Jacobs on How to Read a Book


An excerpt from a new book – Jeffry C. Davis and Philip G. Ryken, Liberal  Arts  for  the  Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012) – contains a short essay by Alan Jacobs on ‘How to Read a Book’.

He kicks off with the wise counsel of Francis Bacon:

‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.’

Jacobs himself takes in discernment, attentiveness, responsiveness, charity, and whim (‘reading for the sheer delight of it’).

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