To Love As Widely and As Well
December 31, 2011
“Everyone’s a critic,” the saying goes, and it’s true: we all make evaluative judgments on what we read. Even as small children we knew what we liked best, what we wanted read to us again and again, and what, conversely, we didn’t care to retrieve after a first encounter. Every nursery has its stock of good-as-new books and its (usually smaller) cache of books worn nearly to shreds by sheer love. Our goal as adults is not to love all books alike, or as few as possible, but rather to love as widely and as well as our limited selves will allow.
-Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
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What a good thought for a new year!
I like the phrase “worn nearly to shreds by sheer love”. I definitely had some books like that as a child, and still have a couple of them with me now. I love the sensation of being in love with the book I’m reading. It never gets old.