How to Read a Book Quotes

“On a lighter note, I recently reread Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.97 When I first read it in high school, I hated it. I considered it frivolous, gossipy, and unmanly. But a pebble in my shoe were two short statements C.S. Lewis wrote in letters: I’ve been reading Pride and Prejudice on and off all my life and it doesn’t wear out a bit.98 Her [i.e., Jane Austen’s] books have only 2 faults and both are damnable. They are too few & too short.99 So Lewis made me rethink my aversion to Pride and Prejudice. On top of that, my daughter was about to read Pride and Prejudice in her integrated humanities program. And my wife loves it. And so do some of our close friends—Tom and Abigail Dodds and Joe and Jenny Rigney. So as a forty-two-year-old father of four daughters, I decided to give the girly novel a second chance. I read it twice in a row—first a dramatized audiobook and then one by a single narrator.100 I loved it. I enjoyed the wit and colorful characters the first time and even more the second time. Now I understand what Lewis was talking about. The novel is clever and hilarious. I’m glad I gave it a second chance—”
― Andrew David Naselli, How to Read a Book: Advice for Christian Readers

“A text’s meaning is something you discover, not something you create.”
― Andrew David Naselli, How to Read a Book: Advice for Christian Readers