/lit/ - Literature

Got Hitler's Revolution by Tedor on the way from Amazon, snag it before it gets shoahed

>My definition of “reading” may be different from the average person’s definition. I know people who “read” all the time— book after book, word for word—but I would not call them well-read. They do have a mass of knowledge, but their brain does not know how to divide it up and catalog the material they have read. They cannot separate a book and identify what is valuable and what is worthless for them. They retain some in their mind forever, but cannot see or understand the other parts at all. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. In the first place, it should help to fulfill an individual’s personal framework and give each person the tools and materials a man needs in his job or profession, whether it is for daily necessity, simple physical fulfillment, or higher destiny. In the second place, reading should give a man a general picture of the world.

>In either case, what is read shouldn’t simply be stored in the memory like a list of facts and figures. The facts, like bits of a mosaic tile, should come together as a general image of the world, helping to shape this world image in the reader’s head. Otherwise, there will be a confusion of information learned, and the worthless mix of facts gives the unhappy possessor an undeserved high opinion of himself. He seriously believes he is “cultured and learned” while thinking he has some understanding of life and is knowledgeable simply because he has a stack of books by his bed. Actually, every piece of new information takes him further away from the real world, until often he ends up either in a psychiatric hospital or as a “politician” in government.

>No man with this kind of mind can ever retrieve from his jumbled “knowledge” what is appropriate when he needs it. His intellect is not filled with his own life experiences, but is filled with what he has read in books and in whatever order the content happened to land in his head. If Fate reminded him to correctly use what he has learned in his daily life, it would also have to cite volume and page or the poor guy could never find what he needed. But since Fate does not do this, these “knowledgeable” men are embarrassed when it really counts. They search their minds frantically for appropriate comparisons and usually end up with the wrong idea. If this were not the case, then it would be impossible to understand the political achievements of our learned government heroes in high places unless we decided they are mischievous and not mentally disturbed.

>A person who has mastered the art of proper and true reading can read any book, magazine, or pamphlet and immediately spot everything he believes he needs to remember, either because it fits his purpose or because it is generally worth knowing. What he has learned then takes its proper place in his imagination concerning the matter at hand. It can then either correct or complete that image to increase its correctness or clarity in his mind.