Reading lessons

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Plato told us: "The book is a dumb teacher." When I was little, I really didn’t like to read. My parents were constantly "interested" in me what was written on the shop signs, but in vain. Instead of colorful books, I took a rope in my hands and ran to the courtyard punks. But in the fifth grade, having decided to read something to my doll daughter before going to bed, I quietly swallowed Dunno. Liked. And then it started: "Alice in Wonderland", "The Wizard of the Emerald City", "The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors" and many other children's bestsellers.

Later, there were literature lessons with serious works of great authors. And I regularly read Kuprin, Yesenin and even Mine Reed. But as soon as he fell in love with the brown-eyed student, Pushkin with his "Dubrovsky" receded into the background. When I got carried away with chemistry, "War and Peace" remained in my memory as something incomprehensible with huge paragraphs. Finally, my first walks under the stars with a freshman student prevented me from reading Crime and Punishment properly …

And yet I have fully learned the rich world of literature. Gradually, my shelf with photo albums and souvenirs filled with books. Those who were advised by friends, who were given by parents and what remained from classmates. The books that I read in the subway, at boring lectures, with traces of coffee and bright bookmarks, smoothly grew into a small library. Although it is small, a little motley and shabby, but mine.

A house without books is like a body without a soul

Whenever I visit someone, I always pay attention to the home library. Psychologists say that you can learn a lot about a person from your "bookish" addictions. After all, the choice of this or that book directly depends on our character.

Fantasy, mystical and "gothic" novels, according to statistics, are read mainly by young people. If your library is dominated by Ray Bradbury, the Strugatsky brothers and Stephen King, then it is possible that in life you lack eventfulness and any acute experiences.

Perhaps you are too correct in your judgments and are often reproached for pedantry? Well, that's not so bad. However, the world of fantasy is a fictional, fairy-tale world in which you experience vivid emotions. So, maybe it is worth changing the usual way of life, and the need to empathize with the heroes of Max Fry will disappear by itself?

In bookstores, novels, detectives and action films are the top sellers. If you have neat stacks of books by Shilova or Marinina on your shelves, then we can say with confidence that there is little romance in your life and you are in no hurry to make your dreams come true. Girls who have a weakness for romance novels probably still have not decided on their personal lives: they are not very purposeful people, they like to "hang in the clouds."

As for those whose home library is dominated by Russian and foreign classics, psychologists say about such that these are girls with character. They have a rich inner world and, as a rule, such young ladies are reliable friends and life companions. But it is possible that they are a little old-fashioned in their judgments and sometimes it is not easy for others around them.

However, everything in life is relative. And if you avidly read the romance novels of Daniela Still, it does not mean that your IQ is lower than that of a seven-year-old child. But what if you recognize only the classics, and no subway trip is complete without a volume of poetry? Of course, this does not mean that you are a "blue stocking". Modern young ladies have a wide variety of "bookish" predilections.

I can say with complete confidence that you are keeping pace with the times if such fashionable writers as Coelho, Murakami and Akunin are found in your library. After all, the same JK Rowling reads the whole world and it would be simply unforgivable if "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was not inadvertently lying around on your bookshelf. Indeed, in our dynamic time, we are in a hurry to know everything, in a hurry to be in the know.

Therefore, we do not mind the money for the world's bestsellers, which are talked about by acquaintances, colleagues and even fat aunts in line. It's fashionable, after all, to read Dan Brown.

Remember all

I made such a discovery a long time ago: bright, memorable books are always associated with a certain life stage or event. After all, you must admit that when you re-read a work, somehow the spirit of the time when you read it for the first time emerges by itself. Here, for example, from the first lines of the "Arc de Triomphe" Remarque "the summer session of the first year comes up, my lazy wallowing on the cool balcony and dreams of a fifth-year student Roma. The first time I read Gone With the Wind, it was winter. And now, looking through my favorite passages in the novel, I plunge into those frosty evenings when I sat up late in the kitchen with a cup of sweet cocoa and envied the determined beauty Scarlett.

Psychologists also confirm my discovery. It is known that when we read the book for the second time, we experience a "mini-excursion" into the past. Our brain momentarily "recalls" events, impressions, and sometimes even smells of the moment when this book was first read. Maybe this is not always possible to the full, but sometimes some kind of memory can flash very clearly. In fact, such "excursions" are very important, because their appearance means, firstly, that the book made the right impression, and, secondly, that your memory has limitless possibilities.

By the way, sometimes psychologists even advise you to reread your favorite childhood books. Supposedly in this way we "train" our memory, and besides, we rethink ourselves and our actions. In the end, it's just useful.

Try to re-read something from the school curriculum - and you will plunge into that distant world of carefree youth. Proud Onegin, cunning Chichikov, strange Raskolnikov - it feels like you've seen them somewhere and met them more than once. After all, the heroes immortalized by the pen of the classic are found in real life too.

Typically, the tastes of a modern girl change at the speed of light. Therefore, more and more often, our home libraries are full of unprecedented diversity: Turgenev side by side with Vogue file sets, and Maupassant with culinary advice. And less and less often we turn to these "dumb teachers", unless only buying another advertised bestseller. Of course, recently people in bookstores are increasingly "demanding" Russian classics - Bulgakov and Dostoevsky have become sales leaders thanks to TV shows. Frankly, after watching "The Master and Margarita", I myself once again re-read the work of the same name. But is it really necessary to be a victim of television PR in order to enjoy the great classic? After all, I want the food for the mind to be tasty and healthy too.

"Books are a tool for implanting wisdom" - so Yan Amos Kamensky once said. However, in our fast-paced age, we are in no hurry to become wise.

A recent opinion poll in Russia showed that 67% of respondents do not use libraries, 35% do not have books at home, and 58% prefer romance novels and detective stories.

After all, the fact that Russia has long ceased to be the most reading power in the world, we have heard for a long time. And we ourselves are increasingly striving to "clear their brains" with some light detective in order to switch over and rest after working days.

However, "fiction refreshes the head well, but does not penetrate the soul," as one of the famous said. So, maybe it's worth "freshening up" with Lermontov or Chekhov? I think that in ten years the soul will say "thank you" for this.