Thursday, April 10, 2025

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Singing the praises of reading Horace Mann, the  American public education reformist advised, “Resolve to edge in a little reading every day even if but a single sentence.” 

Erasmus, 15^th century scholar and humanist wrote, “Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite and worth remembering.”

“When you walk in the mist, you get wet,” says the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen. He means that you absorb the stuff you take in and the environment that surrounds you.  

Reading lets you step out of your cloistered life and dwell in the midst of masters. By the process of unconscious assimilation, good books enter your mind. Reading improves vocabulary, reasoning, concentration, empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence.

Read new books and read old books. Read books written by living writers and those from earlier eras. Read everything you feel is relevant. Read books in English and in translation from as many other languages as interest you – even better if you can read them in their native languages. Reading is the single most powerful thing you can do to improve yourself. There are no wrong books. Let reading be your tool of discovery into the unknown of what to read next.

My father started reading to me when I was eight or nine years old. Not stories written in Hindi – those I could read on my own – but he read aloud books written in English so I would learn the language that was most used in educated circles. He would say, “Soon you’ll be speaking ‘tidbit, tidbit, tidbit’.” A made-up word that meant that I would soon learn to speak English fluently.

Two of the books he read to me sentence by sentence were Alice in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll. I hardly knew English but it was spoken by adults around me. Hearing the sounds of foreign words charmed me. I now realize it was his love and concern for me to grow up to be an educated woman that captivated me and kept me glued to him for 20-30 minutes every Sunday evening.

I reread Alice in Wonderland when I was in college and, this time understood it better. What makes this book a great read for children is because when you are young, it is easy to overlook the deeper meaning this classic piece of literature conveys. No need to delve into questions of personal identity, fluidity of life, or the transition and transformation from childhood to adolescence that this book is about. 

Alice’s world is a cruel and dangerous place. But we read it just for fun. My father must have loved the book not only because of its whimsical characters with unique personalities but also for its deeper meaning. You can say listening and reading has been a constant in my life even before I learned to read. I started to learn “Tidbit” from ninth grade. In eleventh grade my father gave me Lust for Life (Vincent van Gogh’s biography) to read followed by The Agony and the Ecstasy (Michelangelo’s life). Listening to Alice in Wonderland over and over again and reading other books in English had done their trick. I was able to understand the stories of the two great artists, albeit superficially, until I reread them later in life.