6

When you read a good book slowly, attentively, you often stop: a clever thought... A beautiful expression... practical words... It would be good to remember! But it is difficult to remember everything, and you will not learn it by heart...

A common notebook is needed. It is usually called the "Reader's Diary", but this is too serious and official. Just my general notebook, in which the first two or three pages are left blank. Every time you read and come across something that you are sorry to part with, you take out a notebook, write the name of the author, the title, the year and place of publication of the book, and then, without any formalities, write down everything that seems important to you. Sometimes verbatim, sometimes in your own words, sometimes you write down a thought that has arisen along the way — maybe not directly related to the book, but caused by reading it. You just need to develop your own system of signs, so that later, years later, you can accurately distinguish what is a quote, what is a retelling, and what is your thought. After each extract, a number: a page of the book. If you need it, you will always find it.

It happens that you write two lines out of a thick book; Sometimes, you can almost rewrite a thin brochure. It happens that you read a book, and there is no trace of it in the notebook. A notebook is not for a report, not for self-report, everything in it should be free, as you like. The notebook is my world, and it's even scary to imagine that someone will read it except me, although it's not a diary and there seems to be nothing personal about it.

When the notebook is finished, you can renumber its pages and make a table of contents on the first, blank sheets. In a year, one or two notebooks will be written, no more. This is the greatest jewel. Notebook by notebook, little by little, without chasing quantity, and now there are ten, fifteen of them. In your free time, you flip through them, look through them, remember the books you read, think again about the thoughts that you once liked – everything is yours. Even if the book is on the shelf, it is better to write out everything you need from it. It is a pity to emphasize it in your book too – only occasionally, with the lightest pencil, barely touching, and even then in a scientific book, not in a fiction book. To emphasize something in Pushkin's poems? For some reason, this seems to be blasphemy. But if I saw someone I knew underlining in a library book, I'm afraid that the acquaintance would end there. Not even because the book is someone else's, because he spoiled someone else's thing. A book is not a thing, a book is a book. But you have to be a very indelicate, rude person to emphasize at least a word, knowing that after you someone will read the book and stop at the underlined.

To underline, to write out is my personal, secret, business; How can one flaunt one's thoughts? It is dangerous to be friends with a person who is capable of this, and even to be acquainted.

7

If you have difficulty with books, please do not think that this is your personal misfortune. It is a matter of concern for all people. Lenin's letters are full of requests to relatives and friends: "Please, send such and such books." People go to other cities for books. People spend their holidays going to Moscow and sitting in the library for a few weeks. But even in the Lenin Library with its millions of books, every now and then they send a "refusal" - a piece of paper with an explanation that the necessary book is not available or someone else is reading it. People hunt for books, stand in line, beg for them, lure them out. Lomonosov tricked out his first two books, this is reported in his earliest biography. Books were bought at crazy prices, at exorbitant prices. Some people spend almost their entire salary on books, keeping only a pittance for themselves, and these are not fanatics, not collectors, they are ordinary educated people.

It is difficult to live without your own books. Sukhomlinsky said that by the end of the tenth grade, everyone should have about four hundred books of their own at home. If you don't have your own book, you can't suddenly, when the need comes, when an acute desire flares up, to read it. You read your book differently, it is closer to you, you are not in a hurry, you are not afraid that the book will go away — and her world will irrevocably go with it. Collecting books is the job of the fathers. Fathers should leave libraries of books to their children. This is their obligatory duty to children. It is possible that your father lived a difficult life and could not collect even a small library - well, you can't blame your father for anything, it's not noble. But it's time to gradually lay the foundation of the family library - for yourself, for your children, for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This, I repeat, is the duty of every person, especially every man. Collecting and selecting books is a purely masculine business, because it requires courage, severity, and certainty of taste.

When they go to the library, they usually use a subscription — they take books home. Meanwhile, many libraries have very good reading rooms. For some inexplicable reason, a book in the hall, borrowed for an hour, is more "yours" than one taken home. In the library, you read more concentrated; In the library, you can take one, another, a third, find, leaf through them, hold them in your hands. Sometimes it is enough to hold a book for a few minutes to get some idea about it, although there are also mistakes. In the library, you don't just read, you live in the world of books; they are captivating, they are not so silent. You can read at home, or you can do something else. You read in the library. Everything is beautiful there, especially the silence. Nowhere is there such silence as in the library, with the rustle of pages being flipped over, with a quiet conversation at the checkout. There is a lively silence in the library. It is not peace, but a slight excitement, a solemn mood. And the very way to spend time in the library is one of the best ways. Many do not know where to go in the evening. How, where? Yes, to the library, to the reading room! There you will find friends among the regulars, there you will feel like a person. And when you leave the library, you are pleasantly tired, even a little dizzy.

This is out of habit.

It does not tell about many secrets of using the library, about working with the catalog, for example. Those who go to the library regularly will recognize them themselves and develop their own methods of searching for and exploring the book. And those who do not go to the library do not need it.

If you do your homework in the morning, before school, and spend an hour or two in the reading room during the day, you can get a fairly good education by the end of school.