How To Read Better (1)

Reading should be fun and meaningful.

He was called "the best-read man of his generation, one who read everything and remembered everything he read." If you read his books and biographies, you will agree with this statement. CS Lewis could recite whole poems from the heart, his students will begin quoting a verse, and he will complete it. His works are filled with quotes, illustrations, and allusions from several books. His scholarly work average about one thousand citations a piece.

No better man is more qualified than CS Lewis, who can teach us how to read better. He was a reader and a writer all through his life. This short book is a collection of his wisdom on reading. I read it last week and found it refreshing; some points are worth sharing with you. Below are some of the top tips that could help your reading life;

Reading Doubles Your Life Experience

Nearly every human wants to live longer, science has improved our life expectancy to impressive levels, yet, we are not satisfied. There is a simpler way to have more experiences. How? Reading.

“Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books….. Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

Reread your best books

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CS Lewis insists that a person cannot enjoy a book and not read it again. I agree. Reread your best books. Reread your favorite authors. I have reread CS Lewis's books several times over, and I will do so again next year and the year after.

Enjoy your reading

In today’s world, efficiency is the watchword. We want to read fast and move on to other things; we speed read, we read summaries, we condense books of 500 pages into one page, etc. for us, efficiency is more important than enjoying the reading experience. CS Lewis says the art of reading is like eating; you need to enjoy it. He is right. I hate speed reading for the simple fact that it does to reading what prostitution does to sex. You cannot truly enjoy a book if you speed read, you cannot truly enjoy a book if you read only the summaries, and you cannot truly enjoy a book if you do not give it the time it deserves. Sometimes, like in academic settings, the goal is to pass a grade, but in life, the goal is to enjoy your reading experience to the fullest. I beg you, enjoy the book. This leads to another point.

Throw away any book you don’t enjoy

The trick is to begin as many books as you can, but finish only the best ones. I once read a book to 124 pages in a 130 page and dropped it. It lost its taste. I was no longer enjoying it. When CS Lewis finished reading a particular book that he didn’t enjoy, he wrote on it “Never again”. You don’t have to be like Lewis, don’t even read to the end. Some books are just not good enough. Don’t be ashamed or afraid to drop them when you find them; it wasn’t your fault it isn’t a book worth your time. Maybe others will find it useful, just not you.

Read fairytales

There are about three essays in this book defending fairytales. I get the impression that some folks attacked fairytales during CS Lewis's time. Something worse has happened in our generation, we have ignored fairytales entirely. Fairytales enrich your imagination. My life was changed when I encountered CS Lewis fairyland, Narnia. It became my playground; I enjoyed walking with the characters, talking with them and adding my characters to them. This experience enriched my understanding of Christian life more than any book. It was after I read Chronicles of Narnia that I had the courage to read the book of Revelation. I did not see how it was happening at that time, but by trying to copy the characters, I was developing courage, honesty, empathy, and self-control (it had many other lessons). Lastly, it was reading CS Lewis that launched me into writing, I began writing these things called "Letters to Uncle Lewis”, which were my thoughts on his works. That process changed my life, and led me to a friendship with a man thousand miles away from my home and today, I call him “Dad". It started with the imagination. Fairytales enrich your imagination.

Reflect

If reading has become a scarce activity, then reflection (thinking) has become rarer. We are zombies today. You can easily see this. We live in an abundance of information that, just a generation ago, no one can possibly imagine. The average person alive today has access to more information than all the information that entire empires accumulated throughout their existence. In information terms, you are richer than the Roman Empire. But are we wiser? Hardly. Human stupidity has surprisingly remained the same. We don’t reflect. We don’t think. CS Lewis insists that we must reflect after reading. We must articulate our own opinions about what we have read. This is why I write book reviews. They are my thoughts about the books I’ve read. You must find ways to think intentionally; without it, you will be an incomplete reader. Don’t rush to get to the next book; the goal is not to read hundreds of books; the goal is to read and allow those books to speak to you.

Here is a short video on how to practice focused reading. I will be grateful if you share and subscribe. Thank you.