(Over 60 diverse thinkers on how to get more from books)
Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, and poet.
Reading well, “to read true books in a true spirit”, was for Thoreau “a noble exercise, and one that…requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object” (Thoreau 1996, 79–80). This training involved the habitual practice of reading, compulsive “note taking, and conceptualizing” that he developed at Harvard University (Sattelmeyer 1988, 62, 24). In his notebooks he copied out extracts from what he read. They began as conventional commonplace books and became, as he matured, more detailed records of what he read (p. 24). At first he tried to keep a commonplace book for facts and another for poetry, but found the distinction difficult to maintain (p. 63). Indeed, this distinction between poetry and facts partly constitutes Thoreau’s distinction between “true books” and good books.
The latter seem to have been primarily for research. In his systematic note-taking during the years in which “he read, copied extensively, and made notes and commentaries on English poetry and verse drama”, he also compiled eleven volumes “on all aspects of American aboriginal history, culture, and allied subjects” (pp. 31, 64). When attempting to select which books he should read to study a particular subject, he advised: “Though there may be a thousand books written upon it, it is only important to read 3 or 4—they will contain all that is essential and a few pages will show which they are” (Thoreau 1962a, 362). He links this extensive journaling and reflecting on his reading to his literary endeavours (Thoreau 1962b, 1588):
The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought.
The “true books” Thoreau referred to tend to be characterised as classics and the foundational texts of cultures, e.g. “Scriptures of the nations…Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles…Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares” (Thoreau 1996, 82). He exhorted: “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all” (Thoreau 1983, 96). In a journal entry he described this kind of text as “something as wildly natural and primitive—mysterious and marvellous, ambrosial and fertile—as a fungus or a lichen” (Thoreau 1962a, 168).
These require a certain character to read, and in turn inform one’s character: books in which “each thought is of unusual daring”, or that “make us dangerous to existing institutions”, can not be read or enjoyed by the timid or idle (Thoreau 1983, 96). Having read such a book, one feels the need to “commence living on its hint”: “What I began by reading I must finish by acting” (Thoreau 1962a, 72). More generally (Thoreau 1983, 99):
the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface, not concluded in the appendix
A preference for first-hand, factual accounts dominated Thoreau’s reading. We learn less from “learned” books, than “from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies” (p. 98). Accordingly, he reports: “I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them” (p. 71). Nor did he have the inclination for reading newspapers (Thoreau 1962a, 550). In Walden he likens all news to gossip, explaining (Thoreau 1996, 73):
I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked…we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?
Thoreau believed that we receive only what we are ready to receive: “We hear and apprehend only what we already half know” (Thoreau 1962b, 1571). So, we fail to observe phenomena or facts which we cannot link with what we previously observed. Not only must we read true, original books, but we will only benefit from them when we are intellectually prepared, and therefore sufficiently interested in, and attentive to, their message. For example, he remarks (Thoreau 1962a, 699):
Many College text books which were a weariness and a stumbling block when studied I have since read a little in with pleasure and profit
“Thoreau read widely, deeply, and eclectically” (Sattelmeyer 1988, xi). His routine devoted the morning to “some literary labor—whether working on a lecture or essay or writing up previous days’ Journal entries from field notes—the afternoon in walking or boating, and the evening in reading” (p. 58). He described his typical evening (Thoreau 1962b, 1095):
Now for a merry fire, some old poet’s pages, or else serene philosophy, or even a healthy book of travels, to last far into the night, eked out perhaps with the walnuts which we gathered in November
Thoreau’s philosophy of reading is embodied in Walden where he enjoins: “Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written”: the heroic reader diligently studies the texts that are deserving of their attention, to the extent that they are true, sincere, and human, and makes a novel use of them (Thoreau 1996, 80).