When you read a
And I think this point is often missed.
While we are always focused on what to read, or why to read, the timing of it all is easily skipped over.
For instance, I remember reading The Education Of A Speculator, By: Victor Niederhoffer in college.
Studying economics, I was of
But the book came to mean something entirely different when I re-read it four years later in graduate school.
It’s like what stood out moved from aspiration to educational.
It is not that the book was different. It wasn’t.
I was different.
You can read all the parenting books you want to in college, but it’s different when you have kids of your own.
That is to say, she came upon a world of wonderful books when she was ready for them—when she could receive what they have to offer. “I got to read Huckleberry Finn for the first time when I was 35 years old. I read My Antonia for the first time last month. That is a kind of grace. If … I had read Huckleberry Finn at 14, would I have reread it at 35? Maybe, but it wouldn’t have been the same transcendent experience as discovering it as an adult.” So the books are waiting. Of this you may be confident: they’ll be ready when the whim strikes you.
-Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures Of Reading In An Age Of Distraction
