How To Read

We read for many purposes, and when we are reading merely for amusement there are no rules we need follow. But we also have to read for other purposes, and then it will save much time and much turning over pages to look for something, and much forgetting what we should remember, if we know how to read rightly.

This secret does not apply to books we have borrowed, but only to those which are our own to do what we please with. If we are reading a borrowed book, no matter whether a friend or a public library lent it to us, we must keep it clean and make no marks on it. But almost any book that is really worth reading is worth buying, and the greatest books are so cheap nowadays that anyone who cares for a real and lasting pleasure can begin at any moment to form a library of his own.

Now, the secret of reading a book which is our own is to do so with a fountain pen. That sounds rather absurd at first, but it is quite right. A book worth reading is worth marking, and that is where a fountain pen comes in. Many people use a pencil, but that always means that the pages are made smudged and dirty in the long run, not to say that often we cannot read what we have written. An ordinary pen is not convenient, for we may want to read in a train or anywhere. The one thing that exactly meets the need of the true reader is a fountain pen.

We had better make a method of our own, as we go along, for using the pen. Tastes differ. Some people underline what they like, others put a cross opposite it, others draw a line down the side. The margin of a page is for marginal notes, just as we see in a Bible. Thus we may scribble “See page 74,” and then, whenever we or anyone we can trust with it may read the book, that will be useful.

Often we shall want to add something to the index, for the person who made that could not exactly know what we should want. A little index of our own at the back of a book is a very great help. Then we shall sometimes put a question mark in the margin, or a “No,” and just a word to suggest why we disagree. Also very often what the author says will remind us of what someone else has said, and we can put in the margin “Cf. Shakespeare in Hamlet.” Cf. is short for confer, a Latin word meaning “compare.” Everyone who reads seriously has his own way of marking his books, but nearly all serious readers get out their pens when they begin.

One of Arthur Mee’s “Schoolroom Lectures”, from The Fireside Lesson Book

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