How to Live the Great Books (10 Deep-Reading Tactics)

[@exildoc]

Admirable energy you have and contagious it is. But listening to you, I just wonder , have you found the fountain of youth? Reading books at 10 pages a day and having read and reread so many and being so wise and knowledgeable about so many things, a polymath truly, you must be about 620 years old and fought the battle of Agincourt! 😉 Very useful advice and delivered in a stimulant manner. Thank you, Ben!

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you very much :) No fountain of youth, or Faustian bargains, I'm afraid. I do try to stay out of the sun and look after my skin though ;) Having said that... I believe the lockdown year noticeably aged me 😂 So I appreciate your kind words and am thrilled you enjoy the video!!

[@bataviola]

Dear Benjamin, I'm a 20-year-old Hungarian girl and I'm so incredibly glad I found your channel! It really is a treasure how you think and speak. It's smooth and intelligently insightful. I found your channel because one of my all time favourite books is Anna Karenina and I bumped into your video about it. I also realised I was following some of your deep reading techniques without even realising. I've just finished Resurrection by Tolstoy (after reading Anna Karenina) a couple of days ago and in it one of the characters, Maslova was reading a book by Turgenev so I decided to pick up a book by him. I found it fascinating and it really gave me a deeper insight what the way of thinking of the women in the book was truly like. Also I'm really fond of Dickens's work so I decided I'm reading his whole biography. I read Bleak house and it has been my favourite by him so far even though it's not as popular as his other works (which I personally don't understand). Also I was planning to read Proust and hearing you talking about it gave me an extra push and some great advice how to do it. Thanks for the uniquely valuable quality content! I'm looking forward to see your next videos! (Are you an English teacher by the way? I think you'd be an amazing one.) Best wishes from Hungary! :)

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Aw, thank you for such a lovely comment :) You know I lived in Budapest in my early twenties. The jewel of Europe - lovely city, and Hungary is a great country with a rich and fascinating language! So happy to hear you're a Tolstoy fan too. Dickens is tremendous - I'm reading him chronologically and looking forward to Reading much of his stuff over Christmas. I would be keen to hear your thoughts on Proust. I'm not an English teacher, but I did use to teach English :)

[@tristanandtheclassics6538]

This was a pleasure to read.❤️

[@mikeramsay5964]

Whenever I read literature I have my phone ready to look up the meaning of words, what a painting looks like, a piece of music, a place I'm unfamiliar with, and authors, books, and anything else mentioned in the writing. I have expanded my knowledge of opera from reading Edith Wharton, my knowledge of art from reading John Galsworthy. I could go on and on.

[@tristanandtheclassics6538]

Splendid stuff. I'm so glad to hear you speak of slowing down. Whenever a person asks for advice to improve their reading experience, the prime, principle, overriding, and main reply should always be to slow down and inhabit the book, not race on to get to the next book. 10 books, thoughtfully read, are worth a 1000 sped through untasted.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Beautifully put, Tristan. I love how you've phrased that - '10 books, thoughtfully read, are worth a 1000 sped through untasted.' Hear! Hear!

[@tristanandtheclassics6538]

@Benjamin McEvoy Oh, I say Benjamin, that's deuced decent of you to reply. I can only imagine how pressed for time and energy you are with answering others and all the other work you get up to. To get a reply was beyond my expectations. What a sterling fellow you are 😀

[@jonsnow5907]

Holding different works against each other really unlocked reading for me. Love this tip

[@carrollwilliams8861]

You have great charisma and a pleasing voice. I absolutely love this channel.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Aw, thank you, Carroll :) I'm so happy to have you here!

[@أفلاكالأفكار]

Excellent approach, and something that helps in this is reading 'literary biographies' that go into great details the works that a famous person read and worked with such as "George Washington: A Life in Books" or "The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson" or "Samuel Pepys and his Books: Reading, Newsgathering, and Sociability, 1660-1703" Also looking up the library catalogue (catalog?) of a famous person (the books they had in their personal library) can give you massive insights into the books that made up their brain (and give you lots of suggestions)

[@nancymiller1500]

Ben, this is really great stuff. I teach lit analysis in Washington state, and would like to integrate this talk into my online classes. I especially loved your perspective on Proust, and how we need to slow down, savor, look up or research every single mention of any other text, opera, piece of fine art, etc. to flesh out the contextual landscape within which a book is written. I've just stumbled upon you today, via a friend who sent me this link, so thank you so much for doing these videos. Know that they are important, and that professors such as me can use them to greater benefit. Blessings to you!

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, Nancy :) I really appreciate that. I would love to hear how you get on in your classes and how your students respond. If we can get more readers coming to Proust (and staying), what an amazing world we would live in. Keep me posted! :)

[@nancymiller1500]

Thanks for the reply, and I was thinking...this is just a suggestion, Benjamin but the texts I generally assign are more contemporary, modern or post-modern. If you are interested, perhaps you could consider doing a video on writers such as Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison....What thinketh you?

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

​@@nancymiller1500 You've actually guessed next year's Book Club syllabus! :) I'll be focusing on Modernism, and also taking some time to do the ancient classics, next year - Toni Morrison, O'Connor, Woolf, Oates were already in my mind - I'll have to read more of Lessing :)

[@floriandiazpesantes573]

1000 subscribers, congratulations, Benjamin!

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, Florian! :)

[@pratikrajsah]

I'm jealous of your library binded books 🥺

[@kingfisher9553]

Loving this. This is not a strategy I've heard championed before. It makes sense to me; I find myself saying "yes" out loud over and over as I watch this.

[@sherryfyman7066]

Hi Ben - I recently discovered your channel and I love it. I have to restrain myself from binge watching each podcast you've put up. After watching this particular podcast I decided to reread Middlemarch - a book I first read 50 years ago when I was a college student. It was the first book that changed my life. I'm going back to it now to see why it so moved me. This time though, I'm going to be implementing many of your suggestions. First, I'm going to spread out the reading over a year - reading each installment was it was originally published. I'm using the time waiting for the next book to drop to go down every rabbit hole I can find in the texrt. It is absolutely astonishing to see how the characters are coming to life when I take the time to understand why Dorothea was impressed by Jeremy Taylor, what it might tell us about Humphrey Brooke to learn that he had documents on machine breaking and rick burning in his library. Of course Dorothea would be inspired by John Frederic Oberlin and would identify with Saint Theresa of Avila. Thanks so much. This is the most fun I've had in a long time.

[@JenN-hr1yc]

Thanks for this video. I’m just starting to read classics and more deeply. Reading The Mysteries of Udolpho at the moment - along with Catherine of Northanger Abbey 😊

[@mischamartinstudios]

I read the Diaries of Anais Nin when I was 21. I had never heard of Antonin Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty, or Henry Miller, or the philosophers, Freudians, actors, painters and writers in Paris of the 20's. Those diaries weren't quite The Big Bang for me intellectually, but they certainly rocked my world. Dozens of intellectual paths were created.

[@marydelaney7114]

Very clever, creative ideas and tips. Thanks!

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, Mary :)

[@DressyCrooner]

I am glad that when you were my age we both had Nietzsche as our favourite authors.

[@lindastrauss1842]

I’ve practiced two rewarding and profound ways of living what I read. One may be familiar: lecto divina. The other way may not be: Zen koan study. Living with a koan is a totally absorbing, embodied experience. The ancient, traditional (and in my case, translated into English) words are taken into the core of my being. Each breath is the koan, every step, waking and sleeping are the koan. The koan lives in my gut. This may sound obsessive or distracting from functioning in the world. But it’s the way to integrate the wisdom of the koan into my cells. It never fails that some everyday activity reveals the truth of the koan-which is also the truth about myself and the world. Koan practice is my way of understanding memento mori (among other imperatives).

[@noam65]

If I really like an author, I read all their books that I could get my hands on. I started that when I was 13, with Jane Roberts. I had a part time job, in weekends. That's how I paid for them, back then. I know it's not your kind of reading, but I loved it.

[@DressyCrooner]

I have followed deep-reading principles before. Some years ago, when I was reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, she mentioned a composer I'd never heard of - Rachmaninoff. I went away and discovered him on KZbin and fell in love with his Piano Concerto No. 2. Similarly, when Dostoevsky's The Idiot mentions Holbein's portrait of the dead Christ, so I went to search for that.

[@junejefferies212]

Try Prokoviev's War and Peace, Britten's Turn of the SCREW, --operas of brilliance. Wonderful in their own right.Easier to follow as the libretto is a compression of the book. Verdi does the same for Othello. Happy listening 🎶

[@shabirmagami146]

Thank you very much for the wonderful suggestions ...

[@baronessbooks9909]

Very interesting, I read Fitzgerald all summer @ least 3. Now reading “Brothers” Dostoyevsky and yearning for the list I think you mentioned if I read 150 classics you will be well read and understand humanity. This is my reading for retirement.

[@craigmetcalfe1749]

Hey Benjamin, my deep reading techniques are inspired by the background of a few of your videos. I like wine, so when I saw your partner with a drink in her hand, I thought what wine would be appropriate when reading John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I also like Jazz and I noticed that in the background, you have a vinyl copy of Take 5 by Dave Brubeck and another by Jelly Roll Morton. Thank you so much Ben for giving me so many reasons and angles of attack for Great Literature. Cheers!

[@TheUberVideo]

Hey man. I enjoyed this vid, and may I ask what's the best translation of Proust? Thank you

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, mate. I personally love the Moncrieff-Kilmartin-Enright translation, but Lydia Davis also did a tremendous job with the first volume!

[@ralphricart3177]

A book l would really like to get my hands on is the Irish Bible.

[@droulias]

That was helpful. Thank you.

[@arthvader1]

Where do you purchase your hardcovers?

[@danielparsons1930]

I absolutely love this channel (newly subscribed), it's been helpful to me. It's helped refresh my reading, and your approach to great literature is awe inspiring. I'm guilty of speed reading, wanting to get through a book so i can get through another book, and so on. Your ten page system will help mitigate my tendency to speed read. Your advice to further research the art, and musical references in great literature intrigues me, and will ultimately help me better to live the books i read. Thank you, Benjamin, for putting so much time and effort into these videos.

[@jonbrouwer4300]

Savor the details. Live the dream. "Thrum" to the text.

[@abrahemsamander3967]

I haven’t heard of “read books the characters read.” But I love the idea. A book I read recently was The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. A seminal hardboiled detective novel. One of the femme fatales compares the hero to Marcel Proust, he says “who’s he?” And she responds “A French writer, a connoisseur in degenerates. You wouldn't know him." So I’m guessing the time I inevitably reread The big sleep, I should acquaint myself with In Search of Lost Time?

[@marnasorensen988]

I love following the trail of bread crumbs left by an author. Vera Brittain, for example, sent me in search of Winifred Holtby and Rebecca West.

[@Martiniization]

So encouraging and inspiring. Thank you.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

You are so welcome, Martin! Thank you for watching :)

[@ferdawsabedi8804]

Thanks this video was great! I become more excited to keep reading these great works of art just by watching your videos!🙏🏻

[@leot7]

Great Jelly Roll Morton record in the background

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

You know your jazz, my friend :)

[@missjenny1953]

Ben, the pathways you send me on 🌷

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

😊🙏

[@abrahemsamander3967]

I’m familiar with looking up art described in prose. It helps imagining the scenes.

[@deniskennedy8568]

Hi Benjamin is there a particular book of nietzsche that you would recommend to start with. Although I studied Theology I never read him. Thanks, Denis

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Hi Denis - absolutely, I would personally recommend Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Many would say that would be too difficult to start with, but it's a masterpiece, and your background in Theology will ensure you get a lot out of it. Next, I would personally recommend The Birth of Tragedy, Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of Idols, and then Human, All Too Human. He has many more great works, but these would make a nice representation of what he's all about to get started :)

[@deniskennedy8568]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy Great thanks Benjamin. I'll be soon teaching english as a foreign language and I'm finding the classics helpful

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

@@deniskennedy8568 Nice one, Denis. I taught English as a foreign language for many years. I got started in Japan. Absolutely loved it :) You'll have a blast!

[@deniskennedy8568]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy thanks Benjamin I'm looking forward to finding inspiration in more of your videos

[@rosanna5515]

Thank you, as always🎉.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you too, Rosanna! :)

[@elizabethmurphy3931]

EXCELLENT! That is all.

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you :)

[@TheGilbalfas]

I love this channel

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Thank you, Gil :)

[@TheGilbalfas]

@@BenjaminMcEvoy dude you have no idea. For the last 2 days I’ve been binge watching your channel for hours. You convinced me to read the great books instead of another Lee Child. Can you recommend Count of Monte Cristo? I will get to Anna & Don Q in time…

[@SharmaAbhinav-d4f]

what do you think about The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) ?

[@BenjaminMcEvoy]

Big fan of Joel Cohen, and Denzel, and I thought their aesthetic was an ambitious one. I've not yet watched it all the way through, but so far I personally prefer the 2015 Justin Kurzel adaptation with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. But perhaps my opinion will change when I watch the whole thing :)

[@ryanoneiljohnson8743]

Lecture mantap, geng.

[@ClearOutSamskaras]

"...academic can't..."

[@katiemynette4285]

Heart of Kentucky. The brain is functional. The mind is all knowing. Katie.

[@austinrucker3853]

I'm intrigued what is meant by "Heart of Kentucky"?

[@katiemynette4285]

@@austinrucker3853 Hey Austin. Good to meet you. I literally live in the heart of Kentucky as far as location goes. Katie.