The things we can really learn from books

Asking someone what they are reading is like saying, 'Who are you and who are you becoming?'

I believe that everything you need to know you can find in a book. People have always received life-guiding wisdom from certain types of non-fiction, often from "self-help" books. But I have found that all sorts of books can carry this kind of wisdom. A random sentence in a thriller will give me unexpected insight. If I hadn't read Killing Floor, the masterful 1997 novel that introduced the world to Jack Reacher, a former military cop turned vagrant, I never would have learned this valuable piece of wisdom: "Waiting is a skill like anything else."

I also believe that there is no book so bad that you can't find something of interest in it. That, actually, is a paraphrase from the Roman lawyer Pliny the Younger, a sentiment later adopted by Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote. Admittedly, neither Pliny nor Cervantes were subject to some of the weakest "sex and shopping" books from the 1980s, but I still think it mostly holds true. You can learn something from the very worst books - even if it is just how crass and base, or boring and petty, or cruel and intolerant the human race can be.