I think that most of the best state of a person's reading occurs after middle age, but whether or not you can achieve this state depends on the preparation of youth.

After middle age, you can read as you like, but in your youth, you can't be too casual, and you need to accept some guidance from people who have come before. I'm probably one of the people who came over, so I can talk to my classmates casually.

1. Make reading a major life event as early as possible

The biggest reason to read is to get rid of mediocrity. If a person begins to be mediocre in his youth, it will be very difficult to get rid of it in the future.

What is mediocrity? Medioccrity is a passive and utilitarian way of seeking ecology. The mediocre lack nothing, but are not impressed by the splendor of the external world, the weight of human history, the sacredness of ultimate morality, and the richness of the meaning of life. And all that they have lost cannot be gained by one person's limited life experience, so the mediocre team is always quite large. Huang Gu said: "If people have not been watered by the past and the present for a long time, they will be born in the world, and they will feel hateful in the mirror, and they will be tasteless to people." "That's a picture of mediocrity. Huang Gu believes that in order to get rid of mediocrity, it is necessary to "water with the past and the present".

Only books can pour out the vast space and long time to you, can convey to you the signals that all noble lives have long been scattered, and can present countless wisdom and beauty to you together with ignorance and ugliness. With a mere five-foot body, in just a few decades, he can gallop through the past and the present, through the heavens and latitudes, and at least half of this miracle is due to reading.

Such a good thing, it would be a bit of a pity to wait until adulthood to come and make up for it in a hurry, and it is better to enter it in youth. One day earlier, there will be more excitement in life; One day late, one more day of mediocrity.

Young people's immature eyes often deviate, mistakenly thinking that some people are beyond the ordinary due to their birth, wealth, diploma, and luck, but in fact, adults who have experienced vicissitudes know that the most important thing is the quality of their own lives. The quality of life needs to be forged, and reading is an important part of forging.

Second, it is necessary to extend the scope of reading beyond the major

Of course, it is necessary to read professional books, but mainly for the needs of future careers. Lu Xun said: "This kind of reading is no different from the grinding axe of a wooden axe and the needlework of a tailor, and it is not necessarily noble, and sometimes it is very painful and pitiful." (Reading Miscellaneous)

When you apply for college, you have just come out of middle school, you are not yet 20 years old, adults are still used to calling us children, the life of youth is so lovely and so malleable, but all of a sudden is poured into a professional mold blank until the end of life, it is really unbearable.

The vitality of life lies in its elasticity. In addition to sports and entertainment, the flexibility of life in college is more importantly reflected in the free acceptance and independent response of the world as a whole, which of course transcends the major.

Nowadays, many universities have discovered the shortcomings of students only immersed in majors, and have opened general education courses, which is a good way, but as a course, even general education retains a certain narrowness and passivity that is difficult to overcome. Therefore, no matter how heavy the homework and how tight the time, free extracurricular reading is indispensable.

What's more, the development of the times has made great changes in the internal structure and external boundaries of each major, and without enough overall vision, it is difficult to learn even the major well.

3. Find some famous books at the bottom first

Extracurricular reading for college students is the starting point for spiritual maturity, so we must first do a little bit of bottom-up work.

What kind of bottom will be built. Therefore, try to make the bottom cushion stronger, but there is not much time, and you should find a way to save money. The most frugal way to go to the bottom is to choose to read famous books.

Some young people have a rebellious mentality towards famous books, and deliberately avoid them in order to maintain their freedom, which is a childish move. Whether a masterpiece is qualified or not, it is always the result of time and space screening, and we can not care about the famous book, but we can't care about time and space. The fact that a work that doesn't seem to be very good is actually approved by time and space, which in itself is a suspense with a great cultural depth, and this suspense alone is worth reading.

More importantly, because famous books have been read repeatedly by many people, they have become the premise material of words in contemporary society, and if you do not understand famous books, there will be serious obstacles in cultural communication.

Masterpieces and other works are not equal in terms of cultural position, they are like military commanding heights, and if they are occupied, a large piece of land will be lost. For cultural territories outside of the profession, we don't have time to occupy inch by inch, just collect a few commanding heights.

You can't exert even force on famous books, and you can only gnaw on one book at a time, and you must concentrate on reading books related to it, so you must completely occupy this commanding height. It's a slow but fast approach. Don't stack multiple types of books on the desk, let alone put on a well-read pretense of reading a book at a glance and one book a day. If this book is read in general terms, it will end up like a foolish bear breaking corn, breaking one and throwing one away, and the ground is full of messes but not hungry. It should be the other way around, slowly gnaw one book after another, chew and play it repeatedly, and each book is a high-level work, so it won't take long for the scale of your knowledge to take shape.

Some people think that famous works are always difficult, and it is better to read second- and third-rate works to save effort. In fact, first-rate works are not necessarily more laborious to read than second- and third-rate works because their logic is clearer, their expressions are more decisive, their personalities are more distinct, and their forms are more beautiful. Even if it takes a little effort, because you know in your heart that it's enough to be ten, it will feel worth it.

So, how do you identify a masterpiece? That's where help comes in. In the past, many university scholars have made a list of "required readings" for young people, but they have to take into account the integrity of various academic disciplines, as well as the various levels and possibilities of young people, and they always open the list too long. The "required reading" has actually become an "important reading", and you may not be able to read it in a lifetime.

Therefore, we need to look for a more targeted small bibliography. Relevance depends on how well the bibliography writer knows the reader. Young students may wish to have some conversations with their trusted teachers about the list of required readings, and tell their teachers about their interests, shortcomings, and famous books they have read, so as to obtain targeted guidance.

Fourth, if you can't read a famous book, you can put it down temporarily

Even if a familiar teacher prescribes a list of required reading for us in a targeted manner, there are times when we can't read the famous books in the list.

If you can't read it, put it down, don't read it hard. That's where non-professional reading comes in.

Such a famous book is also put down? Yes, put it down. Because you have no fate with it, maybe not for the time being.

No matter how targeted the bibliography is, it only takes into account the necessity of your acceptance, but cannot take into account the possibility of your acceptance. The so-called possibility does not refer to the ability to read, but to the excitatory system, which is the secret of your life, and no one else will know it.

Reading is the development of the external world, but also the development of one's own life. Developing life is not reshaping life, our life is not too bad, there is no need to break the remodeling. Any development should conform to the geographical lineage, and the same is true for the development of life. If you can't read several representative masterpieces in a certain field, it proves that you have no chance with that field as a whole. Maybe after a few years, I can suddenly read it, which shows that the original lack of chance was a short-lived phenomenon. But the temporal phenomenon is also real, and it should not be forced for the possibility of a few years from now.

In the vast sea of books, what really has a fate with you is only a small corner. Famous books are like forests, and there are only a few dozen books that really belong to you. There are many famous works that belong to the relationship between fate and non-fate, so you might as well read it, because the scope of knowledge should always be greater than the scope of familiarity, and the scope of familiarity should always be greater than the scope of possession. As long as you have time, you may wish to browse through a wide range of books that are not even famous books, and there will be a large number of things that will both suit you and improve you. Masterpieces are the foundation, but not enclosed our castles.

When I first entered college, two elderly librarians told me with a smile that they could predict the future accomplishments of first-year students from their library cards. It is difficult to have hope for those who borrow books irregularly, and those who have spent several years trying to gnaw a lot of famous books will not have much interest; Of course, the library card is too empty, and the dense library card is also making people shake their heads. Many of the teachings I have mentioned above have been taught from them.

5. It's not a bad thing to have one or two cultural icons

In the process of choosing and reading famous books, you will eventually meet several famous books and several famous artists who are most in love with you. You are fascinated and not only read it repeatedly, but also look for other works of the authors, collect their biographies, and become their admirers. A friend of mine said he blushed and his heart skipped a beat when he heard his name, and I had a similar story about the French writer Victor Hugo when I was in college. This is what is commonly referred to as an idol.

The emergence of idols is the beginning of a new stage in reading. It is a great blessing to be able to share the soul of a world-class or national-level cultural celebrity. But the deeper question is, why are you so close to him? It's not entirely because of his learning, his art, and his fame, because there are many people who are more learned, more artistic, and more famous than him, but they don't have such a strong feeling in your heart. The fundamental reason may be that your life has some kind of isomorphic relationship with his life, and he is your predecessor in-law in spiritual blood. It is very good for you to secretly recognize this family.

Isomorphism does not equal sibling. He is a high-profile cultural celebrity, and you are an unknown young student, but his existence proves that some part of the living system you enter can reach magnificent heights once it rises, and you find a cable to the sublime.

Some students regard the worship of cultural idols as childish behavior, and they lazily ignore all the objects that can be looked up to and entered, and occasionally their hearts are moved and quickly extinguish themselves, which is really a lot of missed opportunities.

Those who have read books all their lives but can't say which books and authors they like the most, even if they are old scholars who have learned a lot, I don't dare to compliment. In such a vast cultural world, the interest of looking up, the heat of affinity, and the motivation of attachment have been lost, and the whole has become a clay sculpture and wood sculpture that has come to the world with cold eyes, so what can it be said?

6. Young people should base themselves on personal meditation

Young people read books and like to discuss with each other. Mutual discussion can build a field of interest and information, and individual feelings can be circulated, and circulation can often add value.

But in general, reading is a personal matter. Every word must be silently sensed by one's own heart, and many of the most important feelings cannot be expressed in words. The process of reading is mainly connected by one's own life clues, and the life clues that are as thin as a gossamer must be carefully extracted and maintained. All of this may be ruined by the excitement. What's more, we are still students, and even a little superficial feeling does not have the value of spreading to the outside world. It is easy to talk about business among classmates, and once you are angry, you will fall into one-sidedness, and the superficiality will become more superficial.

Just like after watching a touching movie, an audience who is good at absorbing always likes to walk quietly alone for a while, slowly savoring the shots and lines, chewing on the artist's buried good intentions, and will not talk about it enthusiastically before leaving the door of the cinema like some young people. In many cases, the competitive discourse of young people is likely to be a dissipation, especially in the face of the more refined and profound works.

After graduation, everyone has become more and more mature in life and has become an isolated wanderer in reading, which requires looking for opportunities to exchange more reading information. That's a later story, but I'll talk about it later.

7. Reading cards should not be done more

One of the methods that is often taught to read books is to make reading cards diligently. When you read the opinions and information you are interested in, you can immediately copy them on the cards, and after a few months, you will sort out a large number of cards, store them in different categories, and when you want to use them in the future, as long as you pull out the relevant stacks, you can also get a kind of arguments and evidence, and you can get a kind of calmness with arguments and references.

This method is useful for professional research and essay writing, but it is not suitable for extracurricular reading for young students.

Technically speaking, the scope of extracurricular reading is large, and it is not aimed at a specific problem, so the card cannot be started, and even if it is done, it is not very useful, and a lot of reading time is wasted. If you want to excerpt a good sentence, it is better to buy a ready-made "Famous Quotes" and keep it handy.

But the technical problem is still a small matter. The most troublesome thing is that the method of making cards is likely to replace the overall feeling with chapter and sentence storage, and the gains outweigh the losses. A good work is an inseparable organic whole, and even if it captures its eyebrows, it also loses its soul.

Some people say that the reason for making cards is that their memory is too poor, and they can't remember the books they have read.

In fact, the memory of reading has a strict selection function, and the content in the book that really touches you deeply, you can't lose it if you want to, and you need to have more freedom and confidence in this.

Of course, there are a lot of things that can't be remembered, but what can't be remembered is divided into two parts, one is real forgetting, and the other is invisible submersion.

The part that belongs to the real forgetting, don't be sorry, just let it be forgotten, and being able to forget is also a manifestation of a person's freedom and autonomy. The reason why the eunuch had to remember every detail of life in the palace was because he was not free and did not dare to forget. It is forgetting that verifies the independence of the structure of life.

As for the invisible submersion, I think everyone has experienced it. On a certain occasion, due to a certain need, he actually stirred up the impression that he had forgotten many years ago, and surprised himself. Su Zhe once said: "Reading in the early years does not understand much, but there are miraculous achievements in saving trouble in the later years", translated into modern colloquial language, roughly meaning: reading in the early years does not seem to have a deep understanding, but in the later years when examining things, it plays a peculiar effect. This is the immersion of memory.

The function of the human brain is very magical, don't care if you remember on the surface, you will always remember what you should remember, you will always forget what you should forget, and you will always lose and regain what you should lose and regain, just read it easily.

I don't advocate doing a lot of cards in extracurricular reading, but I am in favor of writing some reading notes to summarize the spirit and context of the whole book, and record my understanding and feelings. This kind of reading notes describes both the book and the self. Each one should not be too long, so as to distill the immediate feelings, and the feelings into insights.

8. Take a walk around the bookstore when you have time

The reading resources for college students mainly come from the library. However, I would like you to visit the bookstore when you have time. A bookstore is certainly much smaller than a library, but it's an interesting cultural frontier. What is the direction of the spiritual labor of the present generation? What do these trends have to do with social trends? To what extent is it accepted by the public? The best place to answer these questions is a bookstore.

Brand new pages, bright covers, exaggerated publicity, and busy sales make you feel the steaming state of creation of book civilization everywhere, and creation always gives people a pleasant power. This kind of power is an inexplicable nourishment for the reader, so that you can stretch your muscles and bones after a long time of quiet reading and deep thinking.

You can keep an eye on the best-selling charts, judge who is buying the book, and then be ready to choose a few books for yourself. Choosing a book in a bookstore is different from choosing a book in a library, and for important books, you repeatedly think about the necessity of permanent ownership, so you do a short self-torture in front of the bookshelf. You may be less hesitant to buy a few new books that are not important but interesting, lovely, and as a result, you have a certain question about your strange relationship with books, and every answer to that question makes people happy.

(Excerpt from "Yu Qiuyu's Taiwan Speech: Reading Suggestions")