These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 5: Reading.

Avid Reading

• “Avid reader” is not necessarily an honorable title or, of course, an accusation. Enjoy that title if you have acquired it without being ostentatious. And do not grieve losing it if you missed it in any way.

• Brain cells are just like muscles. They grow with intellectual nutrition and training and wither with starvation.

• There is no limit to the number of pages or books you can read, as long as you are able to ingest and digest them satisfactorily.

• It’s okay to compare yourself with others, but it’s more important to have a self-comparison on which to base yourself to improve and develop your reading skills.

• In reading, a little continuous work is better than a lot that is discontinuous.

• Let your concept of avid reading be more qualitative than quantitative.

• When avid reading is about quantity, don’t be shy about counting the number of times you’ve reread a book.

• Avid reading is not just about reading as many new books as possible. Rereading is not without benefit. It is sometimes a necessity to deepen the understanding of what you missed in the first reading.

• Avid reading is a talent that deserves thankfulness but one that also requires attention in terms of the variety of reading topics and the quality of the chosen books.

• The most critical symptom that calls for attention with regard to avid reading is losing reading pleasure and continuing just as if it were an addiction.