I basically liked and enjoyed this book especially his delineation of what is necessary for the “art” of reading: curiosity, patience, courage, pride, temperance, justice. However, even though it was a short book, it was too drawn out, in my opinion. He could have said things more succinctly. He seemed to be taking himself and this subject much too seriously. An essay probably would have been sufficient. ( )

I said in my previous post about Damon Young’s The Art of Reading that I didn’t expect to read it straight through, all in one go, as I usually do – but I couldn’t resist the chapter on Patience. I read it this morning over my Sunday morning mushrooms-on-toast, overlooking my back garden washed clean by the torrent of rain that came with a thunderstorm at three o’clock this morning.

I wrote that last sentence on purpose: did it provoke you to mutter ‘Oh, do get on’, as Henry James’s The Golden Bowl provokes QEII in Alan Bennett’s sly The Uncommon Reader?

(If you haven’t read An Uncommon Reader, I recommend it, even for ardent republicans. QEII stumbles into a mobile library in pursuit of one of her corgis, and while not a reader, feels obliged to borrow a book. She becomes hooked. Reading transforms her. )

Any resemblance in my writing to that of Henry James can only be in respect of requiring patience from the reader. Young notes that it requires patience of the queen to read Henry James and others like him and deconstructs the investment. It takes patience to read Xavier Herbert in Poor Fellow My Country, and half way through its 1443 pages I was beginning to wonder what I was getting out of my investment. There are books like this, says Young, with protracted sentences and slow evasiveness, books which make us feel – especially as we age and feel our time is limited – that perhaps we are wasting our time.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/05/01/on-patience-the-art-of-reading-by-damon-youn... ( )