i become a thousand men and yet remain myself

Tolle Lege! (Latin, for take up and read)

From Joel Halldorf’s Reading Matters: A History for the Digital Age —

The decline in our ability to engage in deep reading impedes comprehension and makes it harder for us to grasp complex ideas, which is troubling in an age when our collective challenges are increasingly intricate and demand nuance.

But reading is not only about exercising our rational faculties. It also engages our emotions, cultivates empathy, and can broaden our horizons. We only live one life, but literature lets us experience countless others.

When I read a novel by Charles Dickens, for a moment, I become Oliver Twist or David Copperfield. Diving into Jane Austen’s world allows me to see life though the eyes of Elizabeth Bennet.

In the words of C.S. Lewis: “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.”

Halldorf’s main aim in the book is to show how the world of screens that we inhabit has massively eroded our abilities in reading, and thus, in thinking. Importantly, that we must engage in the kind of reading made up of holding a book in our hands, turning the pages, engaging with the content physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. And he cites the neurological sciences — in a way that isn’t boring or incomprehensible, but fascinating and terrifying — to build the case for why this is the kind of reading we must do, in order to think the way we need.

I’ve always been a lover of (physical) books, so I’m definitely the choir to his preaching. But you may enjoy his history of reading too.

However, should you choose not to pick up his book,
for heaven’s sake,
take up a book, and read!