Mortimer Adler on Reading the Great Books For the Sheer Pleasure of It

"It is a far, far better thing to have read a great book superficially than never to have read it at all."

"Note that I did not say this is the only good way or even the best way to read a great work. I said that this admittedly superficial reading is the best and only way the first time around. I grant, indeed I urge, that the great books are infinitely rereadable, that we discern more meaning in them the more we read them and the more we bring to them. But we must start from where we are and with what we are -- with our present age, experience and insight -- and let these works and writers communicate to us here and now."

"This is a good time to recall that the reason why we reread a book is not merely to grasp what was lost or blurred in the first reading, but also to enjoy again what we enjoyed the first time. Exactly the same impulse is at work as the one that impels us to see again a movie which we particularly enjoyed and admired. William Faulkner, remarking on how he continually reread the literary classics, pointed out that with these "old friends" you do not have to begin at the start and go on to the end. "I've read these books so often," he said, "that I don't always begin at page one and, read on to the end. I just read one scene, or about one character, just as you'd meet and talk to a friend for a few minutes." This is all the more reason to read through and enjoy a great book the first time. Without that initial acquaintanceship and pleasure, the stage of familiar friendship and repeated enjoyment can never be reached."

- Mortimer Adler.