Pigs, Fools, and Socrates: "Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books" - Lynne Sharon Schwartz

This year, I’m trying to be more intentional in engaging people about the books we’re reading. I’m asking for reading recommendations, and joining them in conversation about makes a book enjoyable enough to want to share it with others. My goal is to read, deeply and attentively, fifty book recommendations while in my 50’s. (It would be wonderful if I could read fifty in one year, but that seems unlikely, given the realities and demands of life right now.) Even though this book wasn’t one of the books that a friend recommended, it made a perfect work to read early in the “50 at 50 Project”, as I’ve come to think of it.

Actually, I don’t recall how this book came to be on my reading list, but it has been there a long time. Maybe someone really did recommend it to me, and I’ve forgotten the details. Perhaps I came across it on the shelves of a bookstore back in the late 90’s, though it doesn’t seem like a book that would have spent much time in stores, to be honest. It seems like the kind of book with a limited appeal, but many small, beautiful things don’t catch the attention and imagination of the masses.

Schwartz indulges herself in an engaging mental exercise, asking herself why she reads, and how reading has shaped who she is. The book progresses the way a long conversation with a friend would, more like a meandering walk through a garden rather than a forced march from one point to another. Along the way, certain ideas are touched upon and barely developed, and then circled back to again later for further discussion and illumination.

Some of the questions she touches upon are how we choose the books we read, whether we read deeply from one author, or move between authors, whether we read according to a program or syllabus, or whether we let the spirit move us from book to book. (In her discussion of the different types of reading, she reminded me of a novel I attempted to write years ago, in which an obsessive bibliophile expounds upon his theory of the different types of readers, which he named Epicures, Eunuchs, Whores, and Priests. Schwartz isn’t as coarse.)

She also touches upon the different ways that the same person may read. When reading solely for information, we approach a book differently than we do when reading for the joy of the experience.

When speaking of “joy”, I feel compelled to quote John Stuart Mill: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question.” I experience joy when stretching myself to be most fully human, which means reading challenging works that stimulate my intellect. The joys of Socrates are different from the joys of a fool, or a pig, and while I’m no Socrates, I still find myself drawn to books that require more of me, and bring more to me.