"Are We What We Read?"

Neatniks will look at the photo of our library here at Essex Meadows and despair. But I find comfort amid the books, photos and pictures – as familiar to me as a pair of old shoes.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Are We What We Read?”

September 20, 2025

 

“We are what we read – and the power of books to transform the minds and

personalities of their readers can give cause for anxiety as well as for celebration.”

                                                                                                                Prof. Richard Kieckhefer (1946-)

                                                                                                                Northwestern University

                                                                                                                Introduction – Forbidden Rites, 1997

 

We have oft heard the expression that we are what we read. But are we? That I enjoy books is no secret to my family or friends. At our home in Old Lyme we had a library of 5,000 volumes. Even in our apartment at Essex Meadows, some 700-plus books keep me company, on shelves, furniture and the floor.

 

In the March 16-18, 1709 issue of The Tatler, a British literary journal founded that year, Joseph Addison wrote: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” I hope he is right, as fear of dementia haunts many my age. In Between the Acts, her last novel, Virginia Woolf wrote: “Books are the mirrors of the soul.” If she is right, we must be cautious in our speech, and I must be careful in what I write.

 

However, reading may have limits. Albert Einstein – no slouch when it comes to brain power – is alleged to have said or written: “Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” As Einstein had a first class mind, we cannot dismiss his words as balderdash when we browse our local bookstore.

 

For the past twenty-five years I have kept a record of what I have read. The total comes to 849 books, with approximately two-thirds being fiction and one-third non-fiction. While that may seem a lot, keep in mind that according to a Google Search there are thirty-nine million books in the Library of Congress. With the choices we have, we should be selective in choosing what to read. 

 

While many of my men friends prefer non-fiction, I have always felt that good fiction is better at expressing eternal truths. Gerard Baker, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, wrote “The good novel exploits the virtue of storytelling to capture a truth.” While he was writing specifically of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, I could add Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, both of which I have read this year. It is from great writers of fiction that we amass an understanding of myriad character traits: honesty, bravery, loyalty, empathy, patience and integrity, but also jealousy, pride, prejudice, arrogance, laziness and deceit.  Perceptive novelists write of immutable values and add perspective to historical events and people. They help us better understand the people and world around us.

 

So, are we what we read? Certainly, we are formed by what we read, but we are also molded by people around us, our families, friends, those we interact with, by travel, and by jobs and experiences. However and in my opinion(and in contradiction to Einstein), reading and re-reading, done for pleasure and/or instruction, can be creative. We come to understand the vanity of Lear, appreciate village life in Middlemarch, and sympathize with the social aspirations of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

 

Worry not about the question and worry not about what you read. Just continue to read.