I knew that Teddy Roosevelt was a bookworm.  I knew he read at least a book a day and sometimes more (I average about one every three to four days which people think kind of freaky). And he was the President of the United States while doing this!  Bookriot recently posted Teddy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules for Reading. Here they are without the commentary, courtesy of the Bookriot post:

1. “The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books… But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times.”

2. “A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular time.”

3. “Personally, the books by which I have profited infinitely more than by any others have been those in which profit was a by-product of the pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked reading them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment.”

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

5. “He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like.”

6. “Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls ‘the mad pride of intellectuality,’ taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.”

7. “Now and then I am asked as to ‘what books a statesman should read,’ and my answer is, poetry and novels – including short stories under the head of novels.”

8. “Ours is in no sense a collector’s library. Each book was procured because some one of the family wished to read it. We could never afford to take overmuch thought for the outsides of books; we were too much interested in their insides.”

9. “[We] all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.”

10. “Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore Hill; but children are better than books.”

What this all boils down to it seems to me is to read what you love, don’t read what you don’t like, and don’t worry about what others think.  It is interesting to me to see his preference for poetry, and especially novels, which many might deprecate as not serious enough for presidential material, yet I think he is spot on in recognizing how critical an understanding of human nature is to leadership. To gain that insight through an enjoyable diversion seems all the better!

I’m not sure I would be as hard on reading lists as Roosevelt is–I just use them as starters in getting ideas of what to read. I would also add that often books lead to books. One book refers to another author, whose book I am then intrigued to read, or to a subject or person or place I’d like to learn about. What I value in Roosevelt’s list is its absolute unpretentiousness! Snobby readers strike me as the greatest hindrance to aspiring readers who don’t share their tastes.

My wife is an artist and we are members of a local art league that has a plein air painters group. My wife loves doing this and I love going with her and sketching (doodling might be more accurate). But I share my work along with the rest and I am so grateful for the unpretentiousness of this group toward one who knows very little about drawing. They seem glad that I would try my hand at this and are kind to this rank beginner.

Perhaps we booklovers need to learn a lesson from my artist friends, and from Teddy Roosevelt. Actually, I suspect the danger for both booklovers and artists is to get caught up in matters of current tastes and styles and other sorts of things to the point that we no longer read or draw or paint for the love of it – but somehow to be “with” it – whatever “it” is. And because we no longer act like we are loving it, those with any sense (particularly the children who matter even more!) will think there is nothing in books worth loving. But to share a book one loves that is appropriate for the age of the child can be magic for both!