Read what you need

The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

There are any number of reasons why Theodore Roosevelt deserves his place on Mount Rushmore, but for readers that line above from his autobiography might be reason enough. Read what you want to read, what you feel like reading, what speaks to you at the moment, what gives you joy, what stirs your heart and passions, what helps you relax. Read what you need, Roosevelt says. Don't think you have to read what others try to convince you to read.

To some extent this may be true even of students. Certainly those still in school should be required to read textbooks and great works of literature, yet some leeway should be given, especially at the lower grade levels, for students to read what they want to read. Better that than nothing at all, which may be the result when books are assigned that some children cannot or will not read. The objective in these early years is learning to read and developing a passion for reading, and for that a comic book may work better than something less appealing.

For adults, free at last from required reading, Roosevelt's advice is even sounder. Even adults may find themselves directed toward books they are not necessarily interested in reading. Enter a bookstore and stacks of certain books will greet you, subtly trying to convey the message that this is what everybody else is reading. Perhaps you should as well.

Friends sometimes push books on you. "You've got to read this," they'll say, often not even asking if you want to borrow the book but simply giving it to you, assuming you will obediently read it and like it.

Book clubs, too, may direct you toward books you don't necessarily feel like reading. (Although I can say from my own experience that a reading group can also help you discover wonderful books you would have otherwise never experienced.)

I rebel against books with titles like 100 Books You Must Read Before You Die, as if you won't be welcomed past the pearly gates if you haven't read Crime and Punishment. I love Crime and Punishment, as many others do, but that doesn't mean you cannot live a rewarding life without ever opening it.

TR, although an educated man and an author of many books himself, did not believe that what we call serious literature is for everybody, or even for anybody all the time. "There are enough horror and grimness and sordid squalor in real life," he said. What's wrong with a book with a happy ending? The Grapes of Wrath is a great novel, one I'm glad I've read, but most of us most of the time would rather read something like The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency. And we have Teddy's permission to do just that.