Why we should read

“…it is certainly true that we suffer from a flood of reading matter which serves no more purpose than a packet of the cheapest cigarettes or a cocktail. We have not troubled to acquire a critical sense. We accept what we see on the bookstalls and buy books almost entirely from the attractiveness of their wrappers. But there ought to be a mean between a ferocious disdain of all modern writing and a surfeiting on all that is published. The majority of men and women are very much like myself I imagine. They read with equal interest a modern novel say of Sheila Kaye-Smith an exposition of the Relativity Theory like Eddingtons Space Time and Gravitation E. V. Lucass essays Henri Fabre and Trotter and at the same time keep harking back to reread Don Quixote Tristram Shandy Shelley and other favourites among the classics. “[…]Five of the shortest chapters in this book have been already published one in To-Day the others in John o Londons Weekly; to the editors of these journals I am indebted for permission to reprint.” –Introduction