On Reading Well, by Karen Swallow Prior

Karen Swallow Prior, professor of English at Liberty University, wants her students--and the rest of us--to read well.  In On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, Prior reflects on the classical and Christian virtues as they are demonstrated in several literary works.  For each of the Cardinal Virtues (prudence, temperance, justice, and courage), the Theological Virtues (faith, hope, and love) and the Heavenly Virtues (chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility), she has chosen a novel or story to illustrate the virtue.  In doing so, she models a habit of reading in which the reader practices "discerning which visions of life are false and which are good and true--as well as recognizing how deeply rooted these visions are in language."

Her selections are probably familiar to most readers.  She covers a wide range of eras and styles: Henry Fielding, Dickens, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, and modern authors like Shusaku Endo, Cormac McCarthy, and Flannery O'Connor, among others.  Some I've read, some I've only seen movie adaptations, but even if I was completely unfamiliar with the featured work, Prior engages each in such a way that ignorance of the work doesn't prevent the reader from appreciating her analysis.

If you have an interest in the works included, you will certainly want to take time to read those chapters.  But I found Prior's overall emphasis to be most helpful in encouraging the reader to read anything he or she reads with a new set of filters.  Consider some of her advice for readers:

• "Practice makes perfect, but pleasure makes practice more likely, so read something enjoyable." 
• "Read books you enjoy, develop your ability to enjoy challenging reading, read deeply and slowly, and increase your enjoyment of a book by writing words of your own in it."  
• "Reading virtuously requires us to pay attention to both form and content. . . . We have to attend to form as least as much as to content, if not more.  Form matters."  
• "Reading well entails discerning which visions of life are false and which are good and true--as well as recognizing how deeply rooted these visions are in language."  
• Literary reading is "reading that makes on the reader more demands of time, attention, and thought than casual reading."  

Prior doesn't directly address the question of literary fiction versus popular fiction.  I didn't sense a tone of snobbery toward non-literary fiction, but I wonder what she might say about popular modern authors.  Authors like Twain, Austen, Dickens, and Bunyan were hugely popular in their own day.  Their work has stood the test of time and remains popular today.  Today's popular authors like John Grisham, Stephen King, or Nora Roberts are not typically considered literary authors, but they are as popular today as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens were in their day.  So is the issue more how we read than what we read?  Too bad we can't fast forward two or thee hundred years to see which 21st century novelists are on the syllabus.  (My personal feeling is that many "literary" authors are over-valued, and that the world of popular fiction is full of overlooked and undervalued work.)

Whether I'm reading a centuries-old classic or a contemporary sci-fi novel (and I really need to read both), I can pay attention to the moral lessons and multi-layered messages implicit in any story.  Prior has helped me think about reading more slowly and deeply than I otherwise would.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!