LR: Bookshelf in Russia; Cure of Ars room in Ars, France; Left Bank Books in New York City

A type of ad that keeps coming up in Instagram and Youtube tries to sell the idea that one could read 52 books in a year. A variation tries to sell summaries so that one can read in minutes what would normally take a week. These ads claim that Elon Musk, Warren Buffett or some big name reads lots of books and so can you. I own many books, I recognize their value, and I love to read, but not at that level. Reading is like pressing pause on life, and one does not make such choices lightly.

I just came across a Youtube video on German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s The Art of Not Reading (6 Rules for Reading). Since I’ve been a fan after The Art of Being Right I took a look and confirmed that Schopenhauer is not against reading itself, which would be incomprehensible.

The video begins with a quote from the man: “It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents.”

Here are the 6 Rules:

Rule 1: Don’t read too much. Reading takes time and much reading suggests one has much time on one’s hands, or as Schopenhauer wrote, “If a man does not want to think, the safest plan is to take up a book directly he has a spare moment.”

Rule 2: Think about what you’ve read. Don’t just stuff your brain. “Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.”

Rule 3: Focus on the classics. Most people want only what’s hot off the press, but much of it is trash. Instead, choose the company of books that have stood the test of time, the classics.

Rule 4: Read primary texts. Most people read books about authors. Schopenhauer says to go to the original sources. I thank my college teachers who taught us to read Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in the original Spanish. Guy de Maupassant is best in French as Roald Dahl is in English; even ghosts and murderers sound better in their native language.

Rule 5: Good books should be read twice. A subsequent reading adds the light of hindsight, a different mood and a different perspective.

Rule 6: Bad books are poison. Simply, don’t waste time on them.

Unfortunately, there is no Rule #7 on Schopenhauer’s Recommended Reading List.

One way I judge quality has to do with secondhand books: I look for traces left by their previous owners: underlines, highlights and marginal notes.

One of my favorite shops is the San Francisco Book Co. on 17 Rue Monsieur Le Prince in Paris. Apart from the excellent titles, the previous book owners’ marginal notes suggest most were highly intelligent — diplomats, executives or professors — who lived in Paris for a few years. In my last trip I sought out a biography of Louis Pasteur by Darmon and found a secondhand copy in the Latin Quarter chez Gibert Joseph, a favorite for French language books. How about Amazon? I once paid good money for a copy of Guitton’s Le Nouvel Art de Penser, secondhand. You can’t count on Amazon to tell you about marginal notes, but I had read this book before.

Seek out these little shops in whatever major city.

How about Philippine bookstores? None compare to those above, but Fully Booked is the most decent. From here I’ve gotten new non-fiction titles that I’ve used in classes: several on biology and on cognitive biases; and Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence that I have used in my technical writing class. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel was just the first of several books of his that I have. I got my first copy of Wellman’s The Art of Cross Examination in an academic bookstore that has since closed, a book I lost, then replaced with a second from National Bookstore, which otherwise I go to only for art supplies. Finally, a word on the ubiquitous secondhand store Booksale. A dump with air conditioning, Booksale has some good fiction, but I only choose from four or five authors and not often. But true modern classics, e.g., from Winston Churchill, are hard to find there.

I should’ve taken Schopenhauer more seriously, for only 1 in 10 of my books is worth reading twice.

St. Jean Marie Vianney (1786-1859) owned no books personally and read little outside of what he needed for his work; but what he read got into sermons that made him famous throughout Europe. A little book fasting would do so much good in these times.