As I've been reading "Clockwork Angel" by Cassandra Clare, one passage struck me quite forcibly, and I quote: "One must always be careful of books...and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us." Amen! I would add to that: be careful which books you read. Some books can lift you to the heights, empower you; others can drag you down to the depths. To quote an old computer programmer's adage: "Garbage in, garbage out!"
I'm afraid that too many people these days spend way too much of their precious time reading sheer drivel. By that I mean books that have no intrinsic value, no true meaning: books that do not instruct truthfully, do not lift the spirit, that aren't memorable, that do not spark the reader's imagination and inspire them. These books offer nothing of value save some brief entertainment, if that.
But this is a free country; no one is forcing you to read, and your idea of what makes a good book may be totally different from my idea. That's why so many books are published, and in such a wide variety of genres. You can afford to be selective in your reading.
There are few books that I've abandoned in mid-read and those usually because I realized that my time was much more valuable than anything I was getting out of that particular book, that I didn't wish to be "changed" in any way by what I had read thus far---or what was likely to come!
And so I moved on. All for now,
MRTighe
No comments:
Post a Comment