The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs receives a highly favorable review by Trevor Logan in First Things. A sample:
At one particular point in the book, Jacobs recalls the impact of a high school teacher’s anecdote of rereading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time every summer. This initially perplexed Jacobs. How could someone not get sick of reading the same book over and over throughout a lifetime? And doesn’t this go against the conquering “booklist” mentality? He thought this ritual was something people only did with sacred texts such as the Bible. It wasn’t until he matured as a reader that he began to understand the manifold pleasures that one piece of great art could give over and over again.
At one particular point in the book, Jacobs recalls the impact of a high school teacher’s anecdote of rereading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time every summer. This initially perplexed Jacobs. How could someone not get sick of reading the same book over and over throughout a lifetime? And doesn’t this go against the conquering “booklist” mentality? He thought this ritual was something people only did with sacred texts such as the Bible. It wasn’t until he matured as a reader that he began to understand the manifold pleasures that one piece of great art could give over and over again.
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