Why You Should Read Old Books
You know those old, weathered books you keep on your bookshelf so that you look sophisticated during those Zoom calls? You should read them.
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.” - Carl Sagan.
Books are magic. Especially the old ones.
Why you Should Read Old Books
Book choice matters because of the opportunity cost. Even if you are a tremendously fast reader, with oodles of time on your hands - the number of books you will be able to read before you die is frighteningly few. And for every good book out there, there are hundreds of bad ones. You have to choose wisely. You have to choose books that have stood the test of time.
Most of us don’t do this. We rely on bookstores, marketers and ‘Bestseller Lists’ to choose for us. As a result, we end up reading things with shiny covers, by famous people, about trendy things. All of which will be forgotten as soon as the next news cycle takes over.
Old books that have survived into the 21st century and beyond have done so because they were so impactful that people cared enough about them to drag them into our modern world. They have survived against the current of entropy. They are, literally, the cream of the crop.
And the most staggering thing, for me at least, is that the problems that those people faced are no different from what we deal with today. The things that those ancient writers worried about, plague us today. The underlying human condition makes these books relevant, hundreds of years after they were written. Because things haven’t changed all that much for matters of the human mind.
The ancient wisdom is what we should look towards, rather than the latest self-help author trying to pass themselves off as a guru.
Reading Old Books is Hard
I know, I can hear your groan from here. Old books are hard to read. The language is bizarre and clunky. The names are difficult to pronounce. The cultural references make no sense. High school Shakespeare was a nightmare. I get it.
These books are difficult to read because you have to work for the benefits. It isn’t just handed to you on a silver platter. We’ve all become lazy. We’ve gotten used to reading listicles, blog posts and tweets where things are spelled out for us. We want the shortcut, we want the spark notes.
But if you’ve lived in this world for long enough, you’ll know that those bullet points you seek don’t change your life. They inspire and motivate you for a little while, but that fades. The knowledge, without application, becomes just another quote that you use on your Instagram.
The act of reading books that are difficult makes you a better person. When you are forced to wrestle with concepts, to dig for truth, to debate ideas - that’s when you have a chance to think for yourself. When you read the same new books that everyone else is consuming, you don’t have that opportunity. You drink the same Kool-aid as everyone else.
I’m convinced that the challenge of reading old books is the antidote to our short attention spans, to our heightened sensitivities, to our demand for instant gratification. Diving deeply into a classic work that has survived wars, famine and cancel culture is a superpower. That magic is within your reach.
Tips and Tricks
Ok, so you’ve picked up one of the classics. Here are three ways to make it more approachable:
Ignore boring sections. You’re not reading these books just to say that you’ve read them, you’re reading them to uncover ideas. You don’t have to read it cover to cover. Feel free to skip past sections that are putting you to sleep. By following your curiosity you’ll be able to pull out some golden nuggets without driving yourself insane.
Write all over it. Make it yours. I know I struggle with this one, it seems wrong to write on a book, it goes against all of that childhood programming. But it’s so important. If you underline, star and write notes in the margins as you read, you are much more likely to absorb those ideas and be able to apply them to your own life. The notes in the book make it yours and it allows you to have a dialogue with the author.
Supplement your reading with contemporary voices who are commenting on the work. The internet is your friend here. Once you’ve finished a book, diving into one or two contemporary reviews will help you contextualise what you’ve read and maximise the value of the time that you spent. Don’t let these people think for you, that’s a common trap, but they may be able to show you a couple of blind spots or different ways to look at those ideas.
It doesn’t matter which one you start with, it only matters that you do. An old book is not just the paper. It’s a portal to a treasure trove of human experience, wisdom and transcendence. It’s not sexy, it’s not popular, it’s not going to win you any likes on your Instagram or your TikTok.
But it might just change your life.
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