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Why Every Adult Should Read Children's Books
Matt Karamazov
February 16, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes
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📚 Hey, I’m back with more books!
Fun fact about today’s book.
Not only is it one of my favorite “books about books” of all time, but it’s literally where I got the name of this newsletter, The Reading Life.
It’s a magical book about the love of reading, written by the author of the Narnia series, C.S. Lewis.
More on that later.
Something I’ve been working on for a while has been my private goal-setting and accountability group on Skool, called The Competitive Advantage.
I just opened the doors via private invite a day or so ago, and now I’d like to extend that same invitation to you too!
The Competitive Advantage is a community where driven, achievement-oriented individuals collaborate on meaningful goals, share tips and advice, and help each other win.
I’m in there every day now, helping each member however I can, making introductions between people who can help each other, etc.
One of the things I’m MOST excited about is our “Wins” channel where we celebrate each other’s wins and hype each other up.
It actually feels AMAZING seeing community members score wins and celebrate with the rest of the group. Like Matt Brady here:
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We’d love to have you in there!
Today’s book, however, is called The Reading Life, as you have probably guessed.
C.S. Lewis was a brilliant author (and personal friend of J.R.R. Tolkien) who had a deep love for stories - and especially children’s stories.
Even though he had read ALL the classics and the “hard” stuff, he never ONCE looked down on anyone for what they chose to read or not read.
I love that about him, and The Reading Life is a collection of all these super cool observations about, well, the reading life!
Below, I share a short summary of The Reading Life, as well as my best book notes, along with some additional recommended reading.
If you’re looking for a book that will inspire you and reignite your love of the written word all over again, then you might want to read…
In The Reading Life, we have an excellent selection of passages and quotes from C.S. Lewis about the love of books and reading.
Having read the Narnia series growing up, Lewis is one of those people – among whom I include my parents – primarily responsible for my own love of reading, and if you’re a reader as well, you’re going to recognize one of our own kind in these pages.
One of the many, many interesting things about Lewis is his grown-up appreciation of children’s tales, and his recognition of their supreme value, not only to young and promising readers, but to everyone who has grown up surrounded by words.
Far from being a stage one grows out of, the rest of the world seems more magical after having read of dragons and enchanted woods. The tragedy is that everyone “grows up” and forgets just how magical the real world truly is.
All that being said, Lewis is also a champion of the general reader too, and (rightfully) believes that classical texts are not so difficult as to preclude normal people like you and I from reading them and enjoying them.
Plato and Seneca aren’t difficult; it’s the people who write about them today that make everything so needlessly complicated and forbidding!
Many of these classic books just sound intimidating to people who have never tried to read them. They hear university professors talking about Faust or The Count of Monte Cristo and they just make it so boring and complicated that nobody ever tries reading them on their own!
C.S. Lewis was against all that. Great books are for everybody, and whatever you choose to read, you have a perfect right to do so. He just hoped you enjoyed yourself and kept the love of reading alive.
“One of his students recalled that someone could quote any line from the book-length Paradise Lost, and Lewis would continue the passage from memory.
Another student said that he could take a book off Lewis’s shelf, open a page at random and begin reading, and Lewis could summarize the rest of the page, often word for word.”
“In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.”
“A children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.”
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed had I been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
“He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”
“The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.
It has always therefore been one of my main endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”
“The quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic reality in which we all live.”
“I have lived nearly sixty years with myself and my own century and am not so enamored of either as to desire no glimpse of a world beyond them.
As the mere tourist’s kind of holiday abroad seems to me rather a waste of Europe – there is more to be got out of it than he gets – so it would seem to me a waste of the past if we were content to see in the literature of every bygone age only the reflection of our own faces.”
“Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years.”
“The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the reader will most certainly go into it.”
Currently, I don’t have a complete breakdown of The Reading Life published on the Stairway to Wisdom (my library of expert book breakdowns), but below I’ve listed some similar breakdowns that you may enjoy instead.
When you become a member of the Stairway to Wisdom, you’ll gain access to more than 120+ book breakdowns like these ones here, as well as a premium weekly newsletter that will help you build the kind of life for yourself that you’ll love living.
Learn from legendary music producer Rick Rubin about deepening and strengthening your creative instincts, producing great work, and discovering your authentic self through artistic expression.
On his 68th birthday, brilliant technologist Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. Eventually, a life’s wisdom was packed into these 450 aphorisms aimed at living well.
Most people are not NEARLY as alive and awake as they COULD be. This classic book teaches why waking up is much closer and easier than you might think. You'll also learn to experience the gorgeous reality of everyday life that was always available if you only had eyes to see.
Forward this to a friend you think would love this book!
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That’s it! I hope you found these book recommendations helpful, and I’ll be back with even more books for you very soon!
Mere “information” is everywhere today, but what’s going to separate you (and give you the life you desire) is consistent, meaningful action, backed up with the most powerful ideas from the greatest books ever written.
That’s what I always aim to provide you with.
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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