Mini Book Review #13: On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, by Karen Swallow Prior. A short-and-sweet summary of an excellent book.
On Reading Well is a delightful examination of virtues and of stories that help us understand facets of those virtues. This book gives you the opportunity to read such books as The Death of Ivan Ilych (Tolstoy) and The Road (McCarthy) through the lens of a thoughtful English teacher. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on patience (not just because it used my beloved Jane Austen as the author under study). Karen Swallow Prior has a gift for communicating love for literature and teaches us to look beneath the surface as we read.
Want to read more widely or simply read more deeply? On Reading Well will change how you view so much of what you read.
Illuminating quotes from Karen Swallow Prior:
1) “adhering to rules is so much easier than exercising wisdom,” from ch. 1, on prudence.
2) “Courage is measured not by the risk it entails but by the good it preserves,” from ch. 4, on courage.
3) “The modern idea of progress is founded on a belief in the perfectibility—or at least the unbounded improvability—of humankind. Progress is an Enlightenment idea, grounded in the obvious and measurable progress of science but erroneously applied to the human condition. This explains why the science that informs medicine improves over the ages but our poetry does not,” from ch. 6, on Hope.
And, lastly, from the chapter on Patience:
“The essence of patience is the willingness to endure suffering.”
Karen Swallow Prior, from chapter 10 of On Reading Well.
