(Over 60 diverse thinkers on how to get more from books)
Carroll was an author, poet, and scholar.
Life depends on the body being fed, so Nature ensures that we experience discomfort and pain when we eschew meals or eat the wrong things, and tasks such as digestion and circulation are done automatically. A neglect of the mind, however, is far less noticeable, so Carroll suggests we translate some of the rules for eating and drinking into corresponding ones for the mind (Carroll 1907, 17–18).
Finding certain foods disagreeable or causing indigestion we learn to refuse them in future, but we’re slower to learn “how indigestible some of our favourite lines of reading are” (pp. 19–20). This is seen in the after-effects of reading unwholesome novels: low mood, lethargy, and existential weariness (p. 19). The “mental gluttony” of reading too much can lead to “weakness of digestive power, and in some cases to a loss of appetite” (p. 20). We should provide our minds with the proper kind of food in the proper quantity (pp. 19–20).
A thirsty person may appreciate “a quart of beer”, but not “a tray containing a little mug of beer, a little mug of cider, another of cold tea, one of hot tea, one of coffee, one of cocoa…”, even if the same amount of liquid was provided (pp. 21–22). We must not consume “too many kinds at once” of this wholesome mental food (p. 21).
Our body requires that we rest at least three hours between meals, and while the mind requires a rest, too, the minimum interval is much shorter (p. 23). If we have to devote hours to one particular subject we should take a break every hour wherein we turn our mind to completely differently subjects, throwing it “out of gear” for about five minutes (pp. 22–24). Or, to continue the metaphor: “we should be careful to allow proper intervals between meal and meal, and not swallow the food hastily without mastication, so that it may be thoroughly digested” (p. 22).
The mental process corresponding to mastication and digestion is “simply thinking over what we read” (p. 24). This cognitive exertion is much more difficult than passively “taking in the contents of our Author”, so we’re apt to neglect it (ibid.). Carroll suggests: “One hour of steady thinking over a subject (a solitary walk is as good an opportunity for the process as any other) is worth two or three of reading only” (p. 25). This mental digestion arranges our new knowledge into coherent bundles and tickets them so we can readily locate them in future (p. 28). If we skip this step we may believe that we know something, because we remember reading it, but when pressed, find that we can’t answer basic questions about the material (Carroll 1907, pp 26-8). Carroll concludes his analogy: “it is one’s duty no less than one’s interest to ‘read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest’ the good books that fall in your way” (pp. 30–1).
In an introduction to Symbolic Logic (Carroll 1958, xv–xvii) Carroll provides suggestions for reading in general, with a focus on non-fiction. We should read from the beginning of the book rather than dipping in and out because for many kinds of books, especially scientific texts, the latter material will be unintelligible if read out of order (pp. xv–xvi).
Likewise, we should ensure that we thoroughly understand what we have read so far before beginning a new chapter or section, first completing any exercises or problems that were set (Carroll 1907, xvi). Otherwise we’re liable to become more and puzzled and eventually frustrated enough to discard the book (ibid.). A passage not immediately understandable should be reread up to three times, and if this doesn’t suffice we’re likely mentally fatigued (ibid.). In this case, turn to another task, and take the book up again the next day, at which point it will likely be more comprehensible (ibid.). Talking over difficult material with others or even aloud to oneself is a “wonderful smoother-over of difficulties”: we can explain things so clearly to ourselves (ibid.).
Carroll was described as regarding “dutiful reading the business of life”, driven to read “quickly, effectively, even continuously” (Wakely-Mulroney, 185). For Carroll “reading has a distinct moral purpose”, and what we read should be “guided by the shortness of human life rather than subjective factors such as taste or mood” (p. 206). There was a palpable anxiety surrounding the vast amount of text that he wanted to read and the limited time he had available.
On this view reading was “primarily as an exercise in textual storage and retrieval”: being able to recall the contents of a book when it’s no longer in your possession (p. 189). To this end, he recommended “memorisation as an alternative mode of textual engagement”, and often experimented with systems that would enable him to read faster and recall what he read more accurately (pp. 185–6). These connections between systems of memorisation, “reading as a source of mental improvement”, and the effective use of time, dominated his thought: his “diaries contain not only lists of books to read but also “things to be learned by heart,” such as poems, historical chronologies, mathematical formulae, and geometrical problems” (p. 195). He felt that “mnemonic repetition” was a mindful process with “the capacity to furnish meaning, whether by awakening new associations or refreshing and affirming preexisting ones” (p. 197). The ability to read from memory equips the reader “with passages that may be repeated during “the many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible” (p. 194). By separating a book’s form from its content in this way we may “transcend problems relating to the accessibility of print and the temporality of reading” (ibid.).
Wakely-Mulroney saw Carroll as advocating “two potentially oppositional modes of textual engagement: intent perusal designed to acquire information securely, with minimum wasted effort or time, and a comparatively meditative practice in which works are scanned or rehearsed perpetually, whether to reify their contents or recalibrate the mind itself” (p. 207).