Don't Just Read, Reread and Think

A couple things happened over the past couple days... I posted the majority of the books that I have read in the past few years (which seems like quite a few! I am a big book-reading nerd) Secondly, I realized that I don't have a lot of money.

So, I went back to my favorite book. Lectures to My Students by C.H. Spurgeon. This is what he says in his chapter, "To Workers With Slender Apparatus" (few books or means to get them):

The next rule I shall lay down is, master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and re-read them, masticate them, and digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times, and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books which he has merely skimmed, lapping at them, as the classic proverb puts it “As a dog drink of Nilus.” Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading. Books may be piled on the brain till it cannot work. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of reading. They gorge themselves with book-matter, and become mentally dyspeptic. (Lectures pg. 177)

“Why do you buy so many books? You have no hair, and you purchase a comb; you are blind, and you must need buy a fine mirror; you are deaf, and you will have the best musical instrument!”—a very well-deserved rebuke to those who think that the possession of books will secure them learning… In reading books let your motto be, “Much, not many.” Think as well as read, and keep the thinking always proportionate to the reading, and your small library will not be a great misfortune. (Lectures pg. 178)

So my aim for the first portion of the upcoming year is to not buy more books. I want to reread a few before looking to get new ones. I even have some books that I have already purchased or been given that I have yet to read. This post is an attempt to put these thoughts to paper (digital) and to keep me accountable;)