Welcome to Litsy!

An enlightening, thoughtful book about what reading does to our brains and what it provides to the tribe of readers of all types. An encouraging book for readers and wanna-be readers of all stripes.

“So the books are waiting. Of this you may be confident: they'll be ready when the whim strikes you.“

#quoteoftheday #alanjacobs #currentlyreading

I half-like this book. In many ways I agreed with it about the importance of whim; in other ways I recognised that Jacobs would not think much of me as a reader and found that annoying; despite his celebration of reading, he's very critical of the voracious reader with a high reading speed - and even more so of reading lists. Despite the seeming advocacy of reading for pleasure, for Jacobs you can still do it wrong, which is where we part ways.

It's funny how Jacobs advocates reading for pleasure and not worrying about reading Great Novels, and yet just pages later confidently asserts that he always reads books that require reader response with a pencil to annotate... and doesn't bother reading sci-fi and fantasy novels with a pencil, because there's nothing to annotate. Snobbery, I found you hiding here!

I loved this little book. It has no chapters, feeling like a long, extended conversation with someone in our reading “tribe”. One of the greatest pleasures of reading is connecting with others who cherish the reading life as much as we do. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Read what gives you delight-at least most of the time- and do so without shame.

(What a great little book!)
(Art: via Pinterest)

#QuotsyMarch18 Day 7: The tagged book raised an important question as to whether reading makes one a better person. Short answer of Alan Jacobs is no. As he quotes in this book (quote within a quote): “A book is like a #mirror. If an ass looks in, you can‘t expect an apostle to look out.” Jacobs also pointed out that a lot depends on what people read, and why they read what they do. True enough. What do you think?

Thanks to @Gezemice @Suet624 for the tag.
1. reading chair in family room
2. Random piece of paper
3. Need a good stopping point
4. Drink on occasion
5. Sometimes multitasking. Depends on the book
6. Many
7. Reading at home. Audio on the train
8 silently
9. Depends on the book
10. Keeping it like new
11. Depends on the book and why I‘m reading it
12. Tagging @Shemac77 @Elizabeth2 @cobwebmoth @megt @LeahBergen @ErinSueG @MelAnn @batsy @AmyG

My #Christmas #bookhaul! Not pictured: $45 in Barnes & Noble gift cards. 😄

Frivolous is a synonym for #trivial according to the actual paper thesaurus I recently picked up, so I‘m going with this quote :)

#QuotsyDec17 Day 15

With so many books I want to read, speeding through is often tempting. But I need this reminder sometimes that there‘s no #prize for racing to the end of a book.

#QuotsyDec17 Day 10

This is so me with reading #plans 😂😝 A pile of limited options culled from my overflowing shelves seems to work alright, but never a strict list. Though I will make one important exception — when a book is planned because I‘m reading it with someone else, say for book club, a read-a-long, or a buddy read, I‘m all for a good plan 😊 The sharing of the book more than makes up for the lack of serendipity in those cases.

#QuotsyNov17 Day 21

This refers to W.H. Auden‘s five verdicts of an adult reader that address both literary #quality and personal taste: “I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don‘t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don‘t like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don‘t like it.”

#QuotsyNov17 Day 12

#QuotsyNov17 Day 6

#Lost in a book is the best kind of lost, right bookworms? 📚📖📚

Only on page 38, and I think I‘m going to run out of book darts!

I once almost bought an anthology edited by Harold Bloom before I knew more about his approach to books and reading. I‘d heard a bit on a podcast, but reading this passage totally turned me off! Remind me never to pick up a book written or edited by this guy — I don‘t need this kind of elitist judgement in my reading life!

So far, I‘m really enjoying the book this quote is from though — the author definitely disagrees with this sentiment!

#FallIntoBooks Day 20: #BookNerdConfessions No. 2 - I do write my notes on the margins of my PD texts and underline copiously - but never my fiction novels and my children's books. Those are sacrosanct.

I had to skim this for my cataloging class and now I want to abandon my TBR and just reread this!

If you're a reader, you probably enjoy books about reading. This year it's been the primary theme of my reading. And I don't think you can do better than to read Alan Jacobs' wonderful, immensely readable ruminations on the nature of books and the pleasures of reading. If you're a reader, you should read Alan Jacobs.

https://tracyrowanwrites.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/review-the-pleasures-of-readin...

Loving this book, and the coffee.

This just arrived to brighten a rainy afternoon.

Readers who wish to follow Whim rather than whim--readers who have learned enough about what he or she really thrives on to seek more of it--the first lesson must be in humility. . . . Don't waste time and mental energy in comparing yourself to others whether to your shame or gratification, since we are all wayfarers.

Our goal as adults is not to love all books alike, or as few as possible, but rather to love as widely and as well as our limited selves will allow.

The best guide to readerly judgment is our old friend Auden, who summed up a lifetime of thinking...: For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don‘t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don‘t like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don‘t like it.

For heaven‘s sake, don‘t turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of eating organic greens, or...some fearfully disciplined appointment with an elliptical trainer of the mind in which you count words or pages the way some people fix their attention on the “calories burned” readout...How depressing. This kind of thing is not reading at all, but what C. S. Lewis once called “cosmical and ethical hygiene.

In a book On Hope, Pieper explores Aquinas' theology of hope...the hopeful person is by definition a wayfarer...because the virtue of hope lies midway between the two vices of despair and presumption. What despairing and presumptuous people have in common is that they aren't going anywhere, they are fixed in place: the despairing because they don't think there's anywhere to go, the presumptuous because they think they have reached the pinnacle

This really got me thinking about my reading. Why do I read? Am I really reading for the pleasure or to "have read"? It also inspired me to keep on going in my attempt to regain that kind of sustained, concentrated reading I was once capable of and at the same time make no apologies for my choices. (The cat is gratuitous #catsoflitsy)

Read what gives you delight—at least most of the time—and do so without shame. And even if you are that rare sort of person who is delighted chiefly by what some people call Great Books, don‘t make them your steady intellectual diet, any more than you would eat at the most elegant of restaurants every day. It would be too much. Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered,easily assessed

"... for heaven's sake, don't turn reading into the intellectual equivalent of eating organic greens..."

I'm playing hooky from work on Monday. Long weekend = readathon. Let the reading begin.

An answer to the check mark bullet journal style of reading, and an acknowledgement of the different kinds of attention needed for different kinds of books for a full reading life.

Just wonderful and timely reminder of the importance of pleasure and leisure in the reading life, in a world insisting on information, checking off items of lists and scarcity of time. Would definitely reread in the near future.

A book is a handful of silence that assuages torment and unrest.

I'm setting my goal low for me on purpose (I read 85 books last year) to see if it helps me feel less pressure about my reading. I want to be more willing to read only parts of books, to stop reading if I'm not liking something, and to read more long books.

Just don't do the Goodreads challenge, you say? Impossible! I've tried that and it didn't work.

This is a good book, but now I feel slightly guilty for reading to complete book challenges. I'm not going to stop, but I'll try to fit in more Whim.

A little on the academic side, but I liked what it had to say, especially about the value of reading for pure pleasure. #NonfictionNovember2016