Pool reading

Ignore the title of this post. It's just free association for now.

I've always been on to the need to have a basic list of books that are balanced and ultimate influences for you. Yet I've never really married to that the advantage (or necessity and need) to re-read certain influences to really make them our own. Not all books (influences) are worth re-reading, or need to be re-read, of course, but a handful are worth it.

Along the lines of Luther's (and many other peoples') comment that it's better to know a handful of books well than to know many books to a shallow degree.

When you come to a point where you've read basically everything (every level and category or genre of book) you are always wondering what to read now. Rarely do you think of going back and re-reading a great influence.

So beyond a rock like list of basic books one needs also to engage in pool reading. By that I mean having a basic pool of influences that one gets to know really well. The notion of pool here means not just the particular books that make up your definitive list itself, but all secondary works on the subject of those books, or critical essays on each one, or similar works in their category, if that applies, etc.

For the Bible and Federal Theology this is obvious.

Wealth of Nations and On War less so, though it applies.

I guess the main point is to get to know a handful of influences really well. When we begin with influences we can't know what are worthwhile in this sense, but as we get understanding of the entire field, so to speak, and can discern the handful worth knowing really well, then all this applies.

I don't know if I'd ever get much from reading a work of fiction more than once. Perhaps so in some cases, if a lot of time has elapsed, just to see how one's understanding has developed over time. Liker reading an old journal or diary.

Homer definitely. Very little worthwhile secondary literature on Homer though. You have to write your own. Which I have. Here and there.

Shakespeare is most likely a main candidate. The first time we course through Shakespeare we are a bit fazed by it all. And wondering if it's really as great as it's reputation. So to struggle with that (and assuming it is, since it's hard to go up against a vetter like Time) we have to go at it multiple times over time. A worthwhile influence for that.

I just know I've been delinquent in re-reading great influences, other than the Bible and Homer and Reformed Theology and the Work. You shouldn't really just read Herodotus *once*, for instance. Or Thucydides. Works might suffer upon second readings, but so what. You learn something.