Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII
    The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII
    The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII

    By Asa Don Dickinson and Lyman Abbott

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII

    Read more from Asa Don Dickinson

    Related to The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Parent Stories

      Sep 1, 2022

      Parent Stories
      5 min read

    • Article

      Chimes

      Nov 22, 2022

      If you were to dig through my bookshelves and the stacks of volumes piled in front of that library—as per Dr. Seuss’s oft-repeated words: “Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks”—you would find one of my most priz

      2 min read

    • Article

      Austerity And The British Library

      Jun 29, 2017

      It is good if the public library appeals to seniors, but it is not good if seniors are the only people to whom a library appeals. New generations need to use their library, need to need their library, if the library is to remain inside the tightening

      7 min read

    • Article

      One For The BOOKS

      Aug 4, 2021

      Years ago, I bought an old, illustrated book from our General Assembly Library in Melbourne, of all places, puzzled at what a book with such a fancy library stamp was doing there. That’s what we do with old books our taxes paid for, I realised. We de

      2 min read

    • Article

      Playing It By The Book

      Apr 27, 2023

      Playing It By The Book
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Best Little LIBRARIES

      Aug 7, 2022

      Musings from our favourite Kiwi funnywoman When I lose faith in humanity, I go for a walk down to our local park. There’s a lot to do there – chat with the ducks, have a jolly good swing and browse through the latest offerings in our Little Library.

      2 min read

    • Article

      In Praise Of The Photocopy

      Oct 10, 2018

      In Praise Of The Photocopy
      3 min read

    • Article

      The 2018 Millions Gift Guide for Readers and Writers

      Nov 26, 2018

      It’s that most wonderful time of year, when the internet is bursting with gift guides. Here’s our annual list of suggestions for the readers and writers in your life. We’ve got all the essentials: books, candy, bobbleheads, and hammocks. 1. A Bookcas

      3 min read

    • Article

      Books Out of Place

      Oct 31, 2017

      I take it upon myself to pluck used books off a stranger’s stoop or from a trash can lid. This is how they sneak into my life, crawling with traces of the people who held them in the past, who touched them, who were touched by them. Strangers, like g

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Reading Room

      Jul 18, 2018

      The Reading Room
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books With The Most Impact

      Dec 4, 2021

      Books With The Most Impact
      7 min read

    • Article

      Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too

      Mar 30, 2017

      When you examine the lives of history’s most creative figures, you are immediately confronted with a paradox: They organize their lives around their work, but not their days. Figures as different as Charles Dickens, Henri Poincaré, and Ingmar Bergman

      17 min read

    • Article

      Check ’em Out! A Collection Of Extraordinary Libraries

      Oct 1, 2020

      Check ’em Out! A Collection Of Extraordinary Libraries
      4 min read

    • Article

      Brought To Book

      Jan 19, 2022

      WHEN my children were small, I told myself that the library I was putting together, as well as being for my own pleasure, would furnish them with all they ever wanted to know: ‘Dad; how do plants grow? Who built the Taj Mahal? Where is Azerbaijan?’ A

      3 min read

    • Article

      Corresponding With The Past

      Feb 1, 2024

      Corresponding With The Past
      5 min read

    • Article

      Philologist Irene Vallejo: ‘Alexander The Great’s Library Was The First Step Towards The Internet’

      Nov 5, 2022

      Born in 1979, Irene Vallejo is a Spanish writer, historian and philologist, and a regular columnist in the newspaper El País. She had written several books, including novels, essays and children’s books before she published El infinito en un junco (I

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘A Very Street Library Thing’: In Praise Of Sharing Books With Strangers

      Jan 7, 2023

      Even the Dan Brown novels were gone from the street library. There had been two – the Da Vinci one, which everyone has read, and Angels & Demons, which no one has – and they had been there for months. Their arrival had been noted, because the timing

      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Mar 22, 2021

      by Tangaroa Walker Penguin — $38 Don’t read this book — or at least its introduction — if you don’t think you’ll be entertained by the killing of a cow when a car hits one and farcical complications ensue. As the title of that section indicates, “Far

      5 min read

    Reviews for The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Guide to Reading — the Pocket University Volume XXIII - Asa Don Dickinson

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Guide to Reading by Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

      Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.

      This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission.

      Please read the legal small print, and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.

      **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

      **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

      *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****

      Title: The Guide to Reading The Pocket University Volume XXIII

      Author: Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others

      Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7167] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 19, 2003]

      Edition: 10

      Language: English

      *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GUIDE TO READING ***

      Produced by Michelle Shephard, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

      THE POCKET UNIVERSITY VOLUME XXIII

      THE GUIDE TO READING

      EDITED BY DR. LYMAN ABBOTT, ASA DON DICKINSON AND OTHERS

      CONTENTS

      BOOKS FOR STUDY AND READING

      By Lyman Abbott

      THE PURPOSE OF READING

      By John Macy

      How TO GET THE BEST Out OF BOOKS

      By Richard Le Gallienne

      THE GUIDE TO DAILY READING

      By Asa Don Dickinson

      GENERAL INDEX OF AUTHORS

      GENERAL INDEX OF TITLES

      THE POCKET UNIVERSITY

      Books for Study and Reading

      BY LYMAN ABBOTT

      There are three services which books may render in the home: they may be ornaments, tools, or friends.

      I was told a few years ago the following story which is worth retelling as an illustration of the use of books as ornaments. A millionaire who had one house in the city, one in the mountains, and one in the South, wished to build a fourth house on the seashore. A house ought to have a library. Therefore this new house was to have a library. When the house was finished he found the library shelves had been made so shallow that they would not take books of an ordinary size. His architect proposed to change the bookshelves. The millionaire did not wish the change made, but told his architect to buy fine bindings of classical books and glue them into the shelves. The architect on making inquiries discovered that the bindings would cost more than slightly shop-worn editions of the books themselves. So the books were bought, cut in two from top to bottom about in the middle, one half thrown away, and the other half replaced upon the shelves that the handsome backs presented the same appearance they would have presented if the entire book had been there. Then the glass doors were locked, the key to the glass doors lost, and sofas and chairs and tables put against them. Thus the millionaire has his library furnished with handsome bindings and these I may add are quite adequate for all the use which he wishes to make of them.

      This is a rather extreme case of the use of books as ornaments, but it illustrates in a bizarre way what is a not uncommon use. There is this to be said for that illiterate millionaire: well-bound books are excellent ornaments. No decoration with wall paper or fresco can make a parlor as attractive as it can be made with low bookshelves filled with works of standard authors and leaving room above for statuary, or pictures, or the inexpensive decoration of flowers picked from one's own garden. I am inclined to think that the most attractive parlor I have ever visited is that of a bookish friend whose walls are thus furnished with what not only delights the eye, but silently invites the mind to an inspiring companionship.

      More important practically than their use as ornaments is the use of books as tools. Every professional man needs his special tools—the lawyer his law books, the doctor his medical books, the minister his theological treatises and his Biblical helps. I can always tell when I go into a clergyman's study by looking at his books whether he is living in the Twentieth Century or in the Eighteenth. Tools do not make the man, but they make his work and so show what the man is.

      Every home ought to have some books that are tools and the children should be taught how to use them. There should be at least an atlas, a dictionary, and an encyclopædia. If in the evening when the family talk about the war in the Balkans the father gets out the atlas and the children look to see where Roumania and Bulgaria and Greece and Constantinople and the Dardanelles are on the map, they will learn more of real geography in half an hour than they will learn in a week of school study concerning countries in which they have no interest. When there is reading aloud in the family circle, if every unfamiliar word is looked up in a dictionary, which should always lie easily accessible upon the table, they will get unconsciously a widening of their vocabulary and a knowledge of the use of English which will be an invaluable supplement to the work of their teacher of English in the school. As to cyclopædias they are of all sizes from the little six- volumed cyclopædia in the Everyman's Library to the twenty-nine volumed Encyclopædia Britannica, and from the general cyclopædia with more or less full information on every conceivable topic to the more distinctive family cyclopædia which covers the life of the household. Where there are children in the family the cyclopædia which covers the field they are most apt to be interested in—such as The Library of Work & Play or The Guide Series to biography, music, pictures, etc. —is the best one to begin with. After they have learned to go to it for information which they want, they will desire a more general cyclopædia because their wants have increased and broadened.

      So much for books as ornaments and as tools. Certainly not less important, if comparisons can be

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1