Books and Habits, from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn

Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
439K words
Chapters
44

Tags

English Originals Literary Appreciation Humanistic CareSpiritual ComfortIntellectual EnlightenmentDaily ReflectionsWestern ThoughtLife EssaysEast-West ExchangeTraditional AestheticsJapanese CultureCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Books and Habits, from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn by Lafcadio HearnAuthor: Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904,Language: English, Class: PN: Language and Literatures: Literature: General, Criticism, Collections, Release Date: Dec 13, 2004

Editor's review

This book is a compilation of Lafcadio Hearn's (Koizumi Yakumo) lectures on books and reading habits, released as a public-domain edition by Project Gutenberg. Hearn taught in Japan for many years and was adept at discussing reading and writing from a cross-cultural perspective; his lectures are plain in language and vivid in example, treating "why read" and "how to cultivate reading habits" with both interest and scholarship. The discussions of literary taste, reading choices, and everyday cultivation remain instructive for today's readers. As a public-domain e-book, it is easy to search and cite at any time, suitable as intensive reading material for English essays and as a sample of late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century views on literary education. Read it as a conversation with a learned speaker face to face—do not seek systematic completeness, but attend to the cultural stance behind his examples and judgments.

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Reading tips

  1. Read one lecture straight through, mark recurring core words, then review the main point of each paragraph.
  2. After each chapter, write a two- or three-sentence summary in English to practice condensing and retelling.
  3. When encountering a cultural allusion, look up the background first, then reread the original sentence to appreciate the author's mode of argument.
  4. Read alongside other essays on reading to compare different authors' views on reading.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44

FAQ

Is this book a monograph written by Hearn himself? Not a monograph in the strict sense; it was compiled from Hearn's lectures on books and reading habits and bears the marks of oral delivery, so the style is friendly but the structure is less rigorous than a monograph.
How difficult is the English, and what level is it suitable for? The original is in English and belongs to discursive essays; the sentence patterns are fairly plain but contain cultural allusions, so readers with a college-level English reading foundation will find it accessible, while beginners may use annotations and a dictionary.
Do I need to know Hearn's life to read this book? Not systematically beforehand. Knowing that he lived in Japan for a long time and engaged in teaching and writing helps in understanding his cross-cultural perspective; specific biographical details can be looked up as needed while reading.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904 Author

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904) was an essayist and writer of folk literature who wrote in English in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and lived for a long time in Japan. His works draw chiefly on legends, ghost stories and daily life in Japan, China and the Caribbean. Twenty-two of his works are held here, including Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, Some Chinese Ghosts, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: First Series, Kotto, Exotics and Retrospectives and Two Years in the French West Indies. His writing blends foreign observations, folk tales and personal meditation in a cool, vivid style, and has deeply influenced Western understanding of Japanese culture. Because public information is limited, his early life and biographical details are not elaborated here; this note focuses on the subjects and style of his works.