Bachelard's Quote about Reading

Restarting my blog is an idea whose time has come. Have you ever noticed that despite all your intentions there is always a time (we might think it is too late, or regret we didn't start earlier) for things? This thought takes away a great deal of anxiety and reestablishes my trust in the universe. 

For six months after the completion of Part I of my book on Guru Nanak (no title yet) I worried I would never start on Part II. But a week ago the time was ripe and I sat down and sketched out the next three to four chapters. It reaffirmed my faith in not my own, but the universe's timing.  I'm not lazy, just compliant and passive where it matters most.

Anyhow, enough about my self. I am still mulling over the whole concept of reading, and again, after a long lapse, I am reading again. I have more to say about The Phenomenon of Man, finished the The Poetics of Space by another of my favorite authors, Gaston Bachelard, read George Leonard's The Silent Pulse, another marvelous book, am re-reading another of my favorites, read many times before: Eugene Herrigal's Zen and The Art of Archery and in between chuckling over six months of The New Yorker's cartoons.

Here is a quote about reading, from Bachelard:      

"As for me, being an addict of felicitous reading, I only read and re-read what I like . . . every reader who re-reads a work that he likes, knows that its pages concern him." Bachelard goes on to suggest that a first reading of a book is a passive thing. “For here the reader is something of a child, a child who is entertained by reading. But every good book should be re-read as soon as it is finished. After the sketchiness of the first reading comes the creative work of reading.”