I found this volume in the used books section at the Harvard Bookstore, its blue hard cover binding and its title requiring that I buy it and read it. I’m glad that I did.

It’s a bit of a slog, though.  Written by a 46 year old Australian contemporary philosopher, it’s a bit heavy on Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, but it compensates by its insights into why one reads and what one should bring to that endeavor.

The author’s stated purpose is to ‘reply to the repression of the reader’s power to realize worlds’.  Young is all about the partnership between the writer and the reader with the latter having responsibility to read with  curiosity, patience, pride, temperance, and justice.  Chapters deal with each of these qualities in detail, and I found them a bit tedious as the book wore on, but the reminder that we read for education, experience, and uneasiness was valuable.  I also identified with his description of the critic as the ‘catalyst’ for enlivening the reaction between the writer and the reader.

The book is filled with references to some of my favorite authors, primarily Borges and Woolf, and the final chapter is a quick trip through Young’s library where more of my favorites are listed (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, and the critic Frank Kermode).

The book is a valuable addition to my shelves devoted to writing and reading, but it won’t appeal to everyone’s taste.