II. Read books, rather than about books

Many think they know an author because they have read an article or two about him in an encyclopedia. By that рrосеss they know the author just as much as they would have known the man if they had stood beside his burial casket.

To know him, you must read some mass of his writings: see how he leads up to his subject; how he struggles through or around its difficulties; how he reaches his strong conclusions; note his faults and prejudices, his strength and his weakness, all that is human in him; breathe the atmosphere of his day.

III. Read in quantities: just as much as you have time for, and can master at one stretch. By such reading your mind becomes charged with an author's style as by no other means. You get something that will not come by picking out words or reading selections. Memory of language is by association. If you have but one line of association for a word, that word will be difficult to recall, and will not fit in naturally with familiar words, which have a thousand associations. In your conversational style that word will sound stiff and artificial and in your written style it will stand out from the context as if written or printed in red ink. Here is a person, for instance, to whom the word ‘reciprocal’ is not familiar. He encounters it once in some book. He thinks it a nice word. He resolves to use it at the first opportunity. But when he tries, he finds it a little hard to remember. When it does come to mind he makes a grab at it, lest it get away. Then he is not quite sure how to fit his other words to it.

But suppose he finds that word repeatedly in his reading, and used in different connections. He also comes upon ‘reciprocate’ and ‘reciprocity’.

Many associations with that word are developed, it no longer seems strange and foreign. He has come to think it. Then it joins insensibly with the other contents of his thought, and when he comes to use it, it will be easy, natural – and almost certainly appropriate. It will make natural connections with the rest of his speech, because it has made natural connections in his thought.

By reading in quantities you come upon words of the better class over and over again and in ever new connections. You need to absorb an author’s style, so that, after earnest and continuous reading, you will find yourself involuntarily constructing phrases or sentences after the author’s pattern.

IV. Read rapidly

We wouldn’t advise you to “read with pencil in hand” and make notes every minute. Read freely just as if you were listening to an interesting speaker whom you would not interrupt in every other sentence, to say “What was that word or phrase? Wait a moment till I note it down.” Make your book a companion and let it talk to you.

Then, at some natural break in your reading try to recall what is best worth remembering, turning back over the book, if necessary, to fix important items. Make notes then, if you like, but try to remember as much as possible without the notes. If the book is your own, mark freely along the margin any passage that especially interests you. Then you can easily pick up those passages in reading.

When possible, read a whole book or a whole section ‘at a sitting’. It doesn’t take so long to read a whole play of Shakespeare as to go to the theatre to hear it. By such continuous reading you will develop the instinct of language.