The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life

by Steve Leveen was one of the books that I pulled off of a bookcase. It's a deep bookcase, so that books can be two rows deep. It is not a show of disrespect to place a book in the row furthest back, but rather it's an honor. For it means that I had that book carelessly strewn about and picked it up first to give it a more dignified residence.

My Marc Faber post and Banker's comment incited me to rummage through that bookcase. I found The Little Guide languishing on the back shelf, but in exquisite company. A fellow book lover and former manager of mine (pres of company I worked for) gave this book to me. The subtitle of the book says it all

"How to get more books in your life and more life from your books".

I read the book again, and for you readers out there (and you all must be readers because you read blogs) I would recommend this book, or any book that allows you to capitalize better on the time that you spend on books as well as planning your reading. I must admit that I prefer a serendipitous reading route as I do most things in life. But folks that like to stay on a predetermined path, may find a more well-planned course to be preferential.

One of the tools that Leveen talks about is how to mark text. I have no problems marking text in books that I own. (But I would have rather had those little flags that I mentioned to Banker some years ago to mark pages where I had markings). Another book that I resuscitated was my copy of The Philosophy of Santayana-Collections from the Complete Works, edited by Irwin Edman copywright 1936. I believe that the first owner of this book, Richard. C. Rowland (his name neatly penned in blue ink from a fountain pen) on the fly sheet. I did a Google search and found the following.

Richard C. Rowland, retired professor, Portland, Ore., on March 14, 2000. Rowland, who was a Kellett fellow from the College, received a second bachelor’s degree from Oxford in 1940 and a D.Phil. in 1957. He taught at the College from 1946 to 1953, then at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., from 1955-57. He joined Sweet Briar College in Virginia in 1957, where he established the Asian Studies program, served as chair of the English department, and eventually became Charles A. Dana Professor of English. His many honors included a Ford Fellowship in Asian Studies, a Fulbright lectureship in Taiwan, and election as an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa, the only honorary membership in the Sweet Briar chapter’s 50-year history. He retired to Portland in 1998.

I do not know if this is the RCR that owned my book, but I think that it is a good chance that he was. He died in 2000 which is where I found this. (Note that I did this search before and I came up with nothing. I literally just found this as I was writing this entry.) I picked up Santayana's work in a bookstore in Lynchburg, VA: The Little Givens Bookstore. Sweet Briar is not far away. Little Givens sell new books, but they have an extensive used book section. I visit them each time of visit my sister and always come away with an armful of promised erudition).

When I picked up Santayana, I was spellbound. I opened the book and from every page sprang so deftly crafted with the most alluring cadence that I found myself entwined in an arduous embrace from which I never wished to be disentangled. I still feel that way when I pick up Santayana. I must find the 2-3 other books that I bought at the same time.

So this book, well-loved by Rowland as I see his marks of text, is now well-loved by me, and hopefully after me, it will be well-loved by someone who will have a deep appreciation for both the art and content of Santayana. The point is that we tend to NOT mark the books we own. I remember reading about A. Schopenhauer, curmudgeonly philosopher (whose works I've read) whose notes, always in pencil, were so vigorously marked on the text that they often pierced the page or it was apparent that there was lead breakage. With his intellectual fierceness, it is only natural that such energy would travel from his brain down to his hand where he brandished the pencil as a small armament.

I really spend no time thinking about what legacy I might leave to others--that's a bit too arrogant for my taste. But it would bring me great joy for someone to pick up a text that I have loved and marked and find a passage within it that spoke to him or her much as it spoke to me.