William Lyon Phelps The Pleasure of Books

"If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including things that other people are certain are impossible." (William Lyon Phelps)

Yale University's William Lyon Phelps taught the first course about the modern novel.  He penned many books including the Advance of the English Novel.  Professor Phelps was also blessed with the gift of oratory.  In April of 1933, a month before the famous Berlin Book Burnings, he delivered this address, titled "The Pleasure of Books".  

Here is an excerpt from his speech:

"Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are not afraid to mark up, or are afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down.  A good reason for marking favourite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail.

Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils.  One should have one's own bookshelves...The knowledge that they are all there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing.  You do not have to read them all.  Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books.  And I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers:  'Have you read all of these books?'  'Some of them twice.'  This reply is both true and unexpected.

Books are of the people, for the people, by the people.  Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality.  In a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy.  And therre is no doubt in these books you see these men at their best.  They laid themselves out; they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favourable impression.  You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor, only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart." (http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/phelps.htm)

http://www.phelpsfamilyhistory.com/bios/william_lyon_phelps.asp

Nobel Prize Winner Ernest Hemingway Read A Great Number of Books

"He read everything around the house, all the books, all the magazines, even the AMA journals from dad's office downstairs.  Ernie also took out a great number of books from the public library." (Marcelline, sister of Ernest Hemingway)

Growing up in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Hemingway used to read everything he could get his hands on.  His older sister, Marcelline, said that their bookshelf was filled with authors like Shakespeare, Scott, Stevenson, Dickens and Thackeray.  Periodicals such as National Geographic, Atlantic Monthly and Harper's were on the bookshelf at the family cottage on Walloon Lake in Upper Michigan.  

Hemingway also visited the public library on a regular basis.  By the turn of the last century, libraries had sprung up in many towns and cities across the United States, thanks in large part to the generosity of Andrew Carnegie.  Books were starting to come down in price with Little Leather Library, the book of the month clubs and paperback publications.  

Hemingway translated his long hours of reading into a successful writing career, penning seven novels, six short collections, two non fiction works and endless articles.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.  

The year before, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Oak Park Library, he wrote:  "I was at sea or I would have sent you a message telling you how much I owe to the Library and how much it meant to me all my life."    

Hemingway worked as a correspondent for the Toronto Star Weekly at the time of this photograph courtesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway#Cuba_and_the_Nobel_Prize.