Angela Booth

Hilaire Belloc explains why you need to read old books: “There is no habit more dangerous to a man's active intellectual life than that of reading only modern books. The contemporary writer is usually not yet judged by time. He writes under the pressure of fashion and opinion. But the old books have survived. They have been tested. They come to us stamped with the approval of generations. To read them is to breathe a larger air.” Which old book are you immersed in right now?

Here's Why Reading Old Books Is More Important Than Ever: “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. … None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.” — C.S. Lewis, On the Reading of Old Books