Why read, what to read, and Teddy Roosevelt

Why read, what to read, and Teddy Roosevelt

Why Read Books?

Reading well written books expands your vocabulary, gives you a pool of ideas to draw from, makes you a better writer, and gives your brain an intellectual workout. If you conducted an internet search on the benefits of reading, you will find that there isn’t a shortage of valid reasons for reading books. I have also written on the topic, but today, I am writing about why I read books. By the number of book reviews on this blog, anyone can tell that I love to read, but why do I read so much, when there is so much to keep me occupied in a metropolitan city like Toronto?

I have read several times that the most successful people have at least one book that impacted them deeply, and I confirmed it while interviewing people for my book Tales of People Who Get It. That one book makes them think and is usually filled with ideas that they can use. Recently, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, revealed that the business book, Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street impacted him, so knowing that, I went to Amazon to check for the book, although the article said that the book hadn’t been in print since the early seventies. I found only used copies at an exorbitant price, but when I returned a couple of days later, the e-book had just been released (The influence of a powerful person), and the print edition will be out in September. I purchased the e-book, and when I looked at the table of contents, I wasn’t very thrilled because it isn’t the type of book that I would normally read. But I have learned that there are books that you have to slog through to get to the promised land, and I think Business Adventures may very well be one of those books.

For Dee Hock, the founder of Visa, his one book is Omar Khayyam’s Rubáiyát – Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (My Review) had everything he was looking for. Ideas do not come from out of a vacuum – they are usually from a seed that’s planted. The seed may be from a conversation, an article, book, or even a dream – the point is that they come from somewhere. Sometimes one big idea or the blending of two or more ideas when implemented is all it takes to make a difference in your life. I read voraciously because I am looking for my one idea, and I believe it is in an off the beaten track book waiting for me to discover it. I do not read all of the books that I say I am going to read because life happens, and frankly, some of them are not easy to read, and are not your everyday reading material, but in the end, I do the best that I can.

What to Read?

How do you choose which books to read? Do you use this blog to help you decide what to read? For me, as many of you know, I am reading the classics, but I toss in other books so I do not get bored. Recently, I wrote two blog posts [35 Books Recommendations for Summer 2014  and Another 25 Book Recommendations (for the eclectic reader)] that included two lists of books for me to read this summer, and I am working my way through the lists. What you may not know, is that I am also working through a master list – 100 Books of All Time.  I intentionally started to read the books from the master list last year while I was on the World Virtual  Book Tour. And from time-to-time I take a peek at the list of books in Using Rare Books to Inspire Learning — Part 1: Anthropology – Diaries  and Using Rare Books to Inspire Learning — Part 2: Drama – Travel. Since I frequently like to read books off the beaten path, I make sure that I always include a few of them on my reading menu. And I will also get books that are referred to me by people whom I trust.

Related Posts What to Read  Fun Ways to Choose Which Books to Read  

Teddy Roosevelt

By now, you are getting impatient, and wondering what Teddy Roosevelt has to do with any of this, and the simple answer is, a lot! For my younger, international readers, Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt was a United States president who loved to read, and if you believe some of the accounts written about his life, there are days when he read more than two books – he read one book before he started his workday and another before he went to sleep, and he often read another one when he could squeeze it in. I cannot wrap my head around that tidbit. But more importantly, he makes me feel like a slacker and underachiever, how about you? I have read 30 books in 30 days, and a book a day for 30 days, and that took discipline. For a minute, imagine the possibilities if you read at least two well written books each day! Teddy Roosevelt knew how to speed read while maintaining a high level of comprehension, and this is a skill that we have to develop today so we are not left behind. So what books did Teddy Roosevelt read? The answer lies in a letter he wrote to his friend Nicholas Murray Butler on November 4, 1903 (The Square Deal 1901 – 1905: The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 3, 642-644).

Teddy Roosevelt's Reading List

1. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
2. The Histories (read parts) [The Histories, Revised (Penguin Classics)], Herodotus
3. The Histories of Polybius, Vol. I & II (of 2), Polybius
4. Plutarch's Lives (read parts), Plutarch
5. The Oresteia Trilogy: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers and the Furies, Aeschylus
6. Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus
7. Euripides' Hippolytus, Euripides
8. Bacchae, Euripides (My review)
9. Frogs (Focus Classical Library), Aristophanes
10. The Politics (Penguin Classics) (read parts), Aristotle
11. Early Age of Greece (The Early Age of Greece: Volume 1, The Early Age of Greece: Volume 2), William Ridgeway
12. Alexander the Great, Benjamin Ide Wheeler
13. History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria, Gaston Maspero
14. Chronicles, Jean Froissart
15. The Memoirs of Baron De Marbot (read several chapters), Baron de Marbot
16. Charles XII and the Collapse of the Swedish Empire: 1682-1719, Robert Nisbet Bain
17. Types of Naval Officers Drawn from the History of the British Navy,  Alfred Thayer Mahan
18. Critical and Historical Essays, Thomas Macaulay
19. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin Classics), Edward Gibbon
20. The Life Of Prince Eugene, Of Savoy: From His Own Original Manuscript, Prince Eugene of Savoy
21. Life of Lieut.-Admiral De Ruyter, G Grinnell-Milne
22. Life of Sobieski, John Sobieski
23. Carlyle's Frederick the Great, Thomas Carlyle
24. Abraham Lincoln: A History (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics), John M Hay and John George Nicolay
25. Lincoln : Speeches and Writings : 1859-1865 (Library of America), Abraham Lincoln (read some parts over and over again), Abraham Lincoln
26. The Essays (Penguin Classics), Francis Bacon
27. Macbeth (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Wordsworth Royals Series)), Shakespeare
28. Twelfth Night, Shakespeare
29. Henry IV, Shakespeare
30. Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare
31. Richard II, Shakespeare
32. Paradise Lost (first two cantos), John Milton
33. Poems of Michael Drayton (only cared for three or four), Michael Drayton
34. The Nibelungenlied: Prose Translation (Penguin Classics) (read parts), Anonymous
35. The Inferno (Signet Classics), Dante (prose translation by Carlyle – read parts)
36. Beowulf (Samuel H. Church translation)
37. Heimskringla: or, The Lives of the Norse Kings, Snorri Sturluson
38. Njal's Saga: or, The Story of Burnt Njal (George Dasent translation)
39. Gisli the Outlaw (George Dasent translation)
40. Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster (Classic Reprint) (Lady Gregory translation)
41. The Affected Young Ladies, Moliere
42. Rossini: The Barber of Seville, Gioachino Rossini
43. The Kingis Quhair(alternate spelling – Quair) (liked most of the work by Jean Adrien Antoine Jules Jusserand particularly his studies of Kings Quhair)
44. Over the Teacups, Oliver Wendell Holmes
45. Shakespeare and Voltaire, Thomas Lounsbury
46. Sevastopol Sketches (Sebastopol Sketches), Leo Tolstoy
47. The Cossacks (The Cossacks and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)), Leo Tolstoy
48. With Fire and Sword, Henryk Sienkiewicz
49. Guy Mannering (Penguin Classics), Sir Walter Scott
50. The Antiquary (Oxford World's Classics), Sir Walter Scott
51. Rob Roy (Oxford World's Classics), Sir Walter Scott
52. Waverly (The Works of Sir Walter Scott (31 books) [Illustrated]), Sir Walter Scott
53. Quentin Durward, Sir Walter Scott
54. Marmion, Sir Walter Scott
55. The Lay of the Last Minstrel Sir Walter Scott
56. The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea, Fenimore Cooper
57. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
58. The Pickwick Papers (Penguin Classics), Charles Dickens
59. Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
60. Vanity Fair (The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Classic Reprint)), William Makepeace Thackeray
61. The History of Pendennis, William Makepeace Thackeray
62. The Newcomes, William Makepeace Thackeray
63. The Adventures of Philip, William Makepeace Thackeray
64. The White Company, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
65. Charles O'Malley: The Irish Dragon, Completed Edition (Vol I+II), Charles Lever
66. John Keats: The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics), John Keats
67. Robert Browning's Poetry (Norton Critical Editions), Robert Browning
68. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allan Poe
69. Poems (The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson), Lord Alfred Tennyson
70. The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
71. The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling (Wordsworth Poetry) (Wordsworth Poetry Library), Rudyard Kipling
72. Poems (Works of Bliss Carman), Bliss Carman
73. Tales, Edgard Allan Poe
74. Essays (The Essential James Russell Lowell Collection), James Russell Lowell
75. The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Nineteen Other Tales (Modern Library Classics) (read some of the stories), Robert Louis Stevenson
76. British Ballads (The Ballad Book: A Selection of the Choicest British Ballads), William Allingham
77. The Simple Life, Charles Wagner
78. The Rose and the Ring, William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Fairy Tales, Hans Andersen
80. Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, Grimm Bros
81. The Story of King Arthur & His Knights (Classic Starts), Howard Pyle
82. The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus (the short story Free Joe and the Rest of the World inspired him to take action for blacks in the South), Joel Chandler Harris
83. The Woman Who Toils, Bessie Van Vorst
84. Verses (At the Sign of the Sphinx, The Re-echo Club, Diversions of the Re-echo club, and Ballade of Baker Street, Carolyn Wells
85. The Golden Age, Kenneth Grahame
86. All on the Irish Shore, Somerville & Ross
87. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M., Somerville & Ross
88. Asia And Europe, Meredith Townsend
89. Youth, a Narrative, Joseph Conrad
90. Works of Artemus Ward, Artemus Ward
91. Stories of a Western Town, Octave Thanet
92. My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War (helped him to deal with labor problems), Ben Viljoen
93. Through The Subarctic Forest: A Record of a Canoe Journey from Fort Wrangel to the Pelly Lakes, and Down the Yukon River to the Behring Sea, Warburton Pike
94. Cross Country with Horse and Hound, Frank Sherman Peer
95. Ways of Nature, John Burroughs
96. The Real Malay; Pen Pictures – Primary Source Edition, Frank Swettenham
97. Gallops, David Gray
98. Napoleon Jackson, the Gentleman of the Plush Rocker, Ruth Stuart
99. The Passing of Thomas, Thomas Janvier
100. The Benefactress, Elizabeth von Arnim
101. People of the Whirlpool, Mabel Osgood Wright
102. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
103. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, John Fox
104. Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop, Hamlin Garland
105. The Gentleman from Indiana, Booth Tarkington
106. The Crisis, Winston Churchill
107. John Ermine of the Yellowstone – Primary Source Edition, Frederic Remington
108. The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (Dover Thrift Editions), Owen Wister
109. Red Men and White, Owen Wister
110. Philosophy 4, a Story of Harvard University, Owen Wister
111. Lin McLean, Owen Wister
112. The Blazed Trail (Blazed Trail Stories and Stories of the Wild Life), Stewart Edward White
113. Conjuror's House, Stewart Edward White
114. The Claim Jumpers, Stewart Edward White
115. The American Revolution, George Otto Trevelyan

In the letter, Teddy Roosevelt indicated that he would read a book by chance, and it would suggest another. The point is that book recommendations come from everywhere. From the list, you will also notice that he read a lot of poetry, which is common for many successful people. And he has also given us permission to read only the parts of a book that interest us, or the parts that have the answer to our questions. Whenever he faced labor problems, Teddy read books on the Boer War; and a colleague once told me that if you wanted to learn how to negotiate, you should read The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, which incidentally is number one on Teddy Roosevelt's reading list.

To get into the minds of successful people, I wanted to see the types of books they read, so I have started off with Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt. This wasn't an easy endeavor since there was a lot of cleaning up to do to make the reading list more accessible. I was delighted to discover that The Art of Manliness has an interest in Teddy Roosevelt and they also have read his letter to his friend Murray Butler. Will I be reading the books on his reading list? No, only the ones that are on the lists that I am working with. I have enough books to keep me reading for a long time, how about you?