SOME BOOKS ARE TO BE TASTED ,OTHERS TO BE SWALLOWED AND SOME FEW TO BE CHEWED AND DIGESTED

Francis Bacon's famous classification of books into three categories is, indeed, true and convincing. All books do not deserve the same attention from readers.Some books deserve only to be tasted,that is, to be read in parts and then to be dismissed. These books enjoy a temporary vogue and are then forgotten.Travel books,books of true or imaginary adventures, accounts of voyages and exploration, political commentaries, books describing past social customs and the like belong to this category. Life is short,art is long.

        We cannot, therefore,devote much time to such books.We can only taste these books.Then there are books which are to be swallowed, that is , to be read carefully for the sake of entertainment and diversion. These books also add to our knowledge and enhance our understanding of life.To this category belong novels, short stories, anthologies of poems and ballads, biographies, autobiographies etc.These books are not just to be read through without much thought or reflection.Nor do they leave any permanent mark or impression upon the mind. 

               Finally, there are the masterpieces of the world, great books written by great minds. These books deserve a close study.Every sentence in them deserve attention.They are to be studied with full concentration of one's mental powers. They contain the wisdom and experience of great thinkers,philosophers,Goethe's Faust, The work of Tolstoy Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's tragic plays, the Ghazals of Ghalib, the poem of Iqbal, The Quran and the Bible, the French Revolution by Carlyle, Paradise Lost by Milton, The importance of Living by Lin Yutang, and the essays of Francis Bacon are among works of this kind.The readers feels a spontaneous desire to mediate upon what he reads in these books, to allow the ideas of these Writers to sink into his consciousness so that they may become part of his mental equipment.