EDITORIAL

Southland Times, Issue 22999, 19 September 1936, Page 21 (Supplement)

EDITORIAL

WHAT DO YOU READ? If you were to be sent as a solitary exile to a <3esert island for a year and were allowed to take seven books with you what would they be? When this question was put many years ago to an eminent Englishman he answered “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (which is usually published in seven volumes). But he was a grown man with a serious mind. Boys and girls would j make a very different choice; and the choice would vary with the taste and temperament of the individual. It would no doubt be interesting to the youthful readers of The Southland Times Junior if the selection of Southland boys and girls were published; and to make this possible the editor invites all who read this editorial to send in an soon as they can a list of the seven books they would take with them to the lonely island. It may not be possible to print all the lists in full; if there are too many for this to be practicable the lists will be analysed in a special article which will appear on Saturday, September 26. In making up your list do not write down what you think you OUGHT to take, but what you really would wish to take. It often happens that when grown up

people go to an art gallery they praise the pictures which they thing critics and their friends would like. They are afraid to be honest with themselves and say frankly what they like and do not like. Do not fall into this error when you are making up your list. In this device for finding out what Southland girls and boys are reading there is no attempt to | direct their reading into better channels or to “preach.” It is not necessarily the boys and girls who read the classics when they are young who will prove when they grow up to be the cleverest and best citizens. On the other hand the boy who reads nothing but detective stories will not develop his mind very widely. It would also be interesting to learn just how many hours a week boys and girls devote to reading; though it is not proposed to invite answers to this question. But in the hurly-burly life which the average boy and girl leads to-day there cannot be much time for reading. This is a pity, for, as many famous men have remarked in different ways, a great deal of good is to be derived from reading. “God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages” said Channing. Milton had something of the same thought when he wrote “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Francis Bacon declared that reading made a “full man,” and in The Tatler Sir R. Steele wrote “reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” Radio, talking pictures and sport have interfered with reading, but they, too, if wisely used, are educationally valuable. Yet it will be a bad day for the world when the unforgiving minute is so filled with work and play that there is not a second left for reading. But to return to the primary purpose of this article: don’t forget to send in your list of the seven books you would take with you on your exile. j