「故事與詩(shī)歌」Read for Life

Read for Life

David McCollough

Read for life, all your life. Nothing ever invented provides such substance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book. Read to your heart's content. Let one book lead to another. They nearly always do.

Take up a great author and read everything he or she has written. Read about places you've never been. Read books that changed history: Tom Paine's Common Sense, Harriet Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Read those books you know you're supposed to have read and imagined as dreary. A classic may be defined as a book that stays long in print, and a book stays long in print only because it's exceptional. Why exclude the exceptional from your experience? And when you read a book you love-a book you feel has enlarged the experience of being alive, a book that "lights the fire"-then spread the word.

To carry a book with you wherever you go is old advice and good advice. John Adams urged his son John Quincy to carry a volume of poetry. "You will never be alone," he said, "with a poet in your pocket."