At times, my obsession with presidents and with reading overlaps into fun writing territory. On two occasions, I’ve been able to write about President Theodore Roosevelt’s reading philosophy and habits. The first, written in 2014 for Book Riot, outlines a few of TR’s “rules” for reading. The second, published in June last year on Art of Manliness, went into detail about TR’s “pigskin library” — his method of vacation reading, which was much harder pre-Kindle.
I’ve posted both of those articles here in full.
“Teddy Roosevelt’s 10 Rules for Reading”
It’s well known among historians that our venerated 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, was probably the most well-read president, and perhaps one of the most well-read men in all of history. He would read a book before breakfast every day, and depending on his schedule, another two or three in the evening (he was a speed reader extraordinaire). By his own estimates he read tens of thousands of books over the course of his lifetime.
What may not be known to the average reader is how much of a book advocate he really was. Rebecca has already outlined some of his book-loving tendencies, but in doing some research for a different writing project, I stumbled upon a few pages of his autobiography that are just too good to not share with our Riot Readers. My own thoughts are in italics:
1. “The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books… But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times.”
Brilliant! Here we are as readers, ever debating the merits of this list and that list, and we never stop to realize that we can all just end the fighting and enjoy what we enjoy. No list of books will ever satisfy everyone, so why not just make a list of Lots of Very Good Books That Most People Will Enjoy But Not Everyone Has To.
2. “A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular time.”
Ah! Sweet freedom! Newsflash: if a book isn’t all that interesting to you, DON’T READ IT.
3. “Personally, the books by which I have profited infinitely more than by any others have been those in which profit was a by-product of the pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked reading them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment.”
Similar to the above, your reading should be a pleasurable experience. Granted, there’s some merit to slogging your way through certain books, but don’t make it a habit.
4. “The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.”
Screw what everyone else says you need to read; read what you damn well please. That’s what being a lover of books is all about — there’s no need to feel pressure or angst about your TBR list, as Rebecca so eloquently put it last week.
5. “He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like.”
Don’t fake it. If you don’t like The Great Gatsby, shout it from the rooftops. If you think Stephen King is a dolt, I’ll forgive you. Don’t pretend to like something just because you think you’re supposed to.
6. “Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls ‘the mad pride of intellectuality,’ taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.”
There are no hard and fast rules, we all like different things, so stop bickering already. Also, don’t judge others about their book choices lest ye be judged. You know you have some book skeletons in your closet.
7. “Now and then I am asked as to ‘what books a statesman should read,’ and my answer is, poetry and novels – including short stories under the head of novels.”
A statesman, politician, historian, and gamesman says to read novels and poetry and short stories above all else. Awesome.
8. “Ours is in no sense a collector’s library. Each book was procured because some one of the family wished to read it. We could never afford to take overmuch thought for the outsides of books; we were too much interested in their insides.”
Don’t collect titles on your shelves that you think will make you look neato and well-read. Stock your shelves with what you’re interested in, and if people judge you, throw ’em out the door.
9. “[We] all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.”
Isn’t this really the heart of reading? Gosh I love this line. Reading is ultimately about the human spirit, and those are the books we most love and enjoy. Amen, brother.
10. “Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore Hill; but children are better than books.”
Believe it or not, there are some things in life more important than books. Exercise, eating right, healthy relationships — these are all important things. Sure, read as much as you possibly can, but don’t do it at the neglect of every other realm of your life.
“The Pigskin Library: Or, TR’s Philosophy of Vacation Reading”
I have always taken books with me when on hunting and exploring trips. In such cases the literature should be reasonably heavy, in order that it may last. —Theodore Roosevelt
After his presidency ended in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt decided he needed a nice long vacation — away from the United States. He understood his own tendencies quite well; had he stayed, it would have been nigh near impossible for him to resist meddling in his successor’s administration. TR wanted to keep his hands on the levers of power and stay front and center of the news cycle, and he knew it. Since he desired to give William Taft room to operate as his own man, Roosevelt was thus determined to get far away from it all: he set his sights on taking an extended African safari.
There was one particular challenge that required a novel solution: as an incurable, obsessive reader, how would Roosevelt transport a library of books to the African plains and jungles to sate his voracious appetite? He of course couldn’t just do without. As Thomas Bailey and Katherine Joslin write in Theodore Roosevelt: A Literary Life, Roosevelt possessed “a true, deep need to always be reading books.” (Oh, how I can relate!)
The answer to this vexing problem? The Pigskin Library.
Roosevelt and his son Kermit picked out around 60 books — “those which, for one reason or another, we thought we should like to take on this particular trip” — and had them bound in pig’s leather. This would not only make them more durable for transport to and through Africa, but protect the pages from the kind of “blood, sweat, gun oil, dust and ashes” that might arise while on safari. Whereas “ordinary bindings either vanished or became loathsome,” TR explained, “pigskin merely grew to look as a well-used saddle looks.”
These books were housed in a “specially built aluminum and brass container, weighing sixty pounds, portable by one native gentleman.” (Thankfully, with an e-reader of any kind, your own multi-volume vacation library could weigh under a pound and slip easily into your luggage or backpack, no literary sherpas required.)
Books, for Roosevelt, were not sacred objects. The process of binding them in pigskin necessitated an indelicate surgery of removing the old, original bindings. Superfluous white space amongst the books’ pages was cut away as well — the more compact and lightweight they could be, the better, of course. As Roosevelt writes, the books “were for use, not ornament.” The man’s practicality shined through even when it came to his reading habits.
For nearly an entire year, Kermit and Theodore traversed the African continent, hunting game big and small and reading along the way at any and every opportunity; TR had a knack for taking advantage of the possibilities to be found in spare moments:
I almost always had some volume with me, either in my saddle-pocket or in the cartridge-bag. Often my reading would be done while resting under a tree at noon, perhaps beside the carcass of a beast I had killed or else while waiting for camp to be pitched.
When it came to the type of literature the Roosevelts packed, it was as wide-ranging as their far-flung interests. Classic novels, new novels, history, philosophy, natural science, travel and adventure memoirs — you name it, it was part of the Pigskin Library. A note Teddy made about the selection process, in which he discerned which books to take and which to leave, offers a note of advice that any reader would be well-served to pay close attention to:
Let us be modest about dogmatizing overmuch. . . . There are many thousands of good books; some of them meet one man’s needs, some another’s; and any list of such books should simply be accepted as meeting a given individual’s needs under given condition of time and surroundings.
In short, read what interests you and what you’re drawn to. That mantra was a defining feature not only of TR’s criteria for selecting travel books, but his overall reading philosophy.
It is, however, interesting to note that little tidbit from this article’s opening quote: when it comes to the books you take on trips, “the literature should be reasonably heavy.”
What was behind this recommendation?
It arose in part from Teddy’s belief that travel was the perfect time to dive into substantive, challenging books. If those are the only type you bring, and thus your only options for literary entertainment, he explained, you effectively force yourself into choosing to read heartier fare, “as you never would if surrounded by less formidable authors in your own library.”
The other factor came down to a simple numbers game: if Roosevelt had only packed fluffy, quick-reading material, he’d have blasted through it all too quickly. He wanted to bring books with him that he could chew on and wrestle with — lengthy, meaty books which would provide enough cumulative reading hours to sustain him over his trip.
In other words, TR didn’t want to get through his stack too quickly. It’s definitely happened to me while traveling; I pick something especially easy to read, only to get through it while en route and then I have to buy more books when I arrive. It’s certainly not the worst problem, but I could’ve benefitted from better planning.
(Funny enough, Roosevelt still didn’t bring enough books on the journey. At one point he had to restock his supply, adding the likes of Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Michel de Montaigne’s essays, Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, Aldous Huxley’s essays, and more.)
TR contrasts the kind of “reasonably heavy” books he packed with what he planned to consume upon returning home: “when you do reach the journey’s end you grasp with eager appetite at old magazines, or at the lightest of literature.”
In our modern era, “beach reads” almost always refer to light, easy-reading material. Thrillers, romances, purely entertaining yarns. Roosevelt took the opposite approach, saving the light stuff for when he got home.
Consider this tactic when embarking on your next vacation. Will you bring along a stack of Lee Child thrillers? No need to feel guilty if so. But perhaps consider TR’s approach to vacation reading: bring a big stack of books, sure, but make it “reasonably heavy.” Give your brain some stimulation while you’re relaxing on the beach or lying in your tent at night. And don’t worry one bit about your travel library getting soiled — be it dirt, sand, rain, kid puke, or zebra blood. At least if you’ve put a protective cover on your phone — of pigskin, or otherwise.
Was his middle name Polonius? This advice would fit on a page of Reader’s Digest