Maybe I Should Read This

I didn't have good luck reading a book on how to read books. Perhaps I should try this one--How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard.

Actually, Bayard sounds very interesting. He says that many people (at least in France) "see culture as a huge wall, as a terrifying specter of 'knowledge'...But we intellectuals, who are avid readers, know there are many ways of reading a book. You can skim it, you can start and not finish it, you can look at the index. You learn to live with a book."

I think they may throw the word "intellectual" around more freely in France than we do here. I mean, the only time I hear it, it's being used as a slur. (As in, "Why, thank you, intellectuals, for telling us we don't know how to read.") But once I got past my first knee-jerk response, I read that quote of Bayard's and went, "Mais oui!"

Thanks to artsJournal for the link.