Why Should Every Man Build A Library? | The Catholic Gentleman

on today's episode we'll be talking about books books and more books actually why every man should have a library [Music] [Applause] [Music] for today's handshake we want to discuss knowledge fits in with the episode on books nicely i'm not talking about the gift of the holy spirit knowledge you know being able to understand divinely god's creation and our our place within it however there is a connection there as gk chesterton stated that the pursuit of knowledge built within us is to better understand the world and our place within it men have a responsibility to grow in knowledge throughout life so that they can understand everything from the physical to the mental to metaphysical on a deeper level so that we can appreciate it more so that we can grow in that uh love of god's creation and so that we can rightly view reality and our place within god's plan so spend time listen to the episode learn to grow in knowledge on today's episode we're going to be talking about books which is one of my favorite topics but before we get there let's talk about patreon we value your support in fact we need your support producing high quality content isn't free it takes a lot of time effort and financial resources but we want to keep producing these episodes for you so if you feel called please check us out at patreon.com catholicgentlemen see the different tiers we have there and consider supporting us at whatever financial level you can we have some great rewards uh set up on those tiers so check that out we'd like to thank the sponsor of this episode exodus 90. if you don't know who exodus 90 is we strongly encourage you to check them out they are a ministry for men that provide a road map for spiritual and actually physical growth exodus 90 is all about asceticism prayer and brotherhood now those three pillars really form the basis of the program but it's 90 days of spiritual exercises readings getting together with your brothers and your fraternity that you choose and it's difficult i'm not going to lie i've done it a few times and it can be hard it can be demanding but we need a little bit of asceticism in our lives today the church doesn't ask very much of us these days and that's okay but sometimes we need a little bit of an extra spiritual shot in the arm and that's what exodus 90 can provide so there's a science behind why exodus 90 is developed the way it is right those 90 days have a purpose but another great thing about exodus 90 is that they also offer different variations they offer a lenten program they offer different challenges over the summer so basically they have something that's there to fit your needs again asceticism prayer fraternity and really that road map that men find so helpful i know that i did when i went through it so we strongly encourage you to check them out at exodus 90.com catholicgentlemen or click on that link in the show notes so great so we both have personal love of books i found myself for me was actually post high school into college that i really started appreciating books i was forced to read books in school you know and and for good reasons but i didn't appreciate those reasons and when i left high school and was in college i knew i really had this desire for wisdom right to be the wise old man and i was like i got to start somewhere so i got to start reading and i found myself just collecting books i called myself kind of like a um like i was i was going and saving books from like half price bookshelves and stuff like that you know and uh now was i reading them not necessarily but i knew they were good books to have and so i do read books and i love reading and it's it's definitely been a a great uh staple of my life it hasn't come easily for me i was definitely again not conditioned that way through growing up and so it's been definitely a learned experience and i i guess something that really triggers in my mind is you know for our listeners here who maybe don't read you know a few books a year or 20 or 30 or 40 books a year you know we have to set goals for ourselves but we also don't find time to read we really have to make time to read but there's incredible value and worth in doing that yes absolutely well my story is a little bit different than yours but i grew up around books my mom loved to read and she was a talk show host and so she received all kinds of books in the mail so i was always like drowning in books but she had these beautifully like custom made bookshelves in the in the living room of her home and they were always lined with you know all kinds of fascinating books um that really just kept you know stoked my curiosity but then we also always go to the public library and i always loved the public library um to me it was just like paradise you know just rows and rows of bookshelves with thousands of different books on every different topic i was a weird kid but uh but but i really did love it and as i got older i just read on every topic i could find you know and all different um areas of interest and started kind of building my own library now at the time i was protestant um and then i converted catholicism so i got rid of all of my protestant books and i had to start all over but um for the past 12 years of being catholic i've you know been slowly building my catholic library and i'm now you know i did rough estimate a little over a thousand books in my library and um our living room has kind of been transformed into a library in our home but but i've always just kind of had a love affair with books and not some of that goes back to my personality not everybody is the same as me but for me personally i just find books as uh symbols of knowledge you know the collected wisdom of humanity um and i find that thrilling and exciting so i just i've always loved libraries and i've really enjoyed building my own yeah no i love hearing that and it is it's fun because we both come at it from a different perspective but we both understand the ultimate joy and the ultimate desire and you know even calling within a man's heart uh for uh collecting books and for owning books and building a library uh to extend and and i i will talk about the joys and the benefits and everything in a little bit but i think that it's important to start and talk a little bit about the history of libraries and of books right and so libraries go back until you know way antiquity you know thousands and thousands and thousands of years and and we have you know groups of tablets and stuff like that but what i want to talk about is more the churches right where the catholic gentleman here the church's history within books and the church sure does have an incredible history and it was and it's not an overstatement to say that the church maintained and saved the writings of the philosophers um before christ of the um of the um old testament uh of the early thinkers and stoics and and things like that that it was the church that maintained these these books on knowledge and understood and remember we didn't have printing presses so not only did the church maintain them but there were monks who devoted their entire lives to rewriting by hand books so that these books could be shared and these books and this knowledge could be could be spread and it was the church that was fighting against you know uh germanic tribes and uh things so for instance during the fall of rome in 367 or i can't remember the exact years somewhere around there and in the fall of rome um we had these these uh um barbarian tribes these you know in in germanic tribes and stuff like that they were just going through monasteries and stuff like that in different libraries and they were just destroying them they were setting them on fire ruining books that literally would take a year to hand write you know and just hundreds of them being destroyed and it was the church that was sending them to areas that were safe right so the church was sending these books these these knowledge and we're not talking about just catholic books right or books that were written by catholic saints and thinkers talking about the the the history of of mankind and history of thought and knowledge in many of these situations and was sharing that um and trying to save that because they understood the the pursuit of of knowledge and the importance of that within our our lives and so we as men today in 2022 have this um this responsibility but also this um sort of um prestige if you will to to carry on uh that tradition yeah in the church yeah every monastery used to have a scriptorium they would call it and certain monks were assigned there just like some monks were assigned to the kitchen or you know the gardeners and some were assigned to the scriptorium where they would painstakingly copy all these these ancient manuscripts including the bible and things like that so yes it really monastery saved western civilization from you know after the fall of rome all of that was preserved in in monasteries and things like that and the fact that we can read you know the writings of plato or aristotle you know is is in large part due to the church's influence and to that preserving of western culture um but another aspect i want to uh emphasize too is just the love of of wisdom we talk talk about philosophy what does that mean well the word philosophy philosophy in greek means the love of wisdom and i think to as there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom you know knowledge is just kind of filling your head with facts well anyone can do that you can just memorize things all day and it can really have no influence on you but wisdom is when you really integrate that knowledge into your soul it's like it becomes part of you and i think as men we should really be striving for wisdom more even than knowledge because you can you can learn all kinds of things there's been men who are very knowledgeable but also very unwise and very foolish and very sinful and corrupt and in many different ways so i think wisdom is what we should be striving for but the the that's what the church preserved was the wisdom of the ages the wisdom of humanity um and preserved it for future generations and not only has the as these documents been preserved but there's kind of a living conversation that takes place around them so for example aristotle said what he said right and that was preserved but then there's been great minds and philosophers debating and commentating and adding their own thoughts and like saint thomas aquinas for example you know and and he took that original wisdom and then said well let's synthesize that let's talk about what the church fathers have to say let's talk about what this philosopher over here has to say and he uh enhanced and embellished that conversation and now that conversation is still continuing there's still people now talking about thomas aquinas and debating him and the conversation continues so as a man when you start collecting these books start imbibing this wisdom it's kind of like you're joining this centuries-old conversation of great minds through history who have just kind of again and that passionate pursuit of wisdom and truth have um been you know compiling this wisdom in books for for centuries so collecting that kind of enables you to kind of join the conversation too in your own small way amen i love it i think that's absolutely great so in the last um 300 years or so there's been this tradition of creating your own library at home and there is you know there's the wealthy class in the working class and right and so you had the wealthy nobles and everything that had just these beautiful library systems right in in every single you know manner if you will you you'd go in and there would have a room that was a huge room with you know florida 30 foot ceilings you know of just books and everything like that and and they collected it and it was and oftentimes the place where gentlemen would go and have cigars and you know drink scotch or something like that for a night cap and um but the working man also was a collector of libraries and i find like that's that's what's often overlooked right is that that the working class that couldn't afford thousands of volumes of books and maybe throughout their whole lifetime they could afford 40 to 50 books right it was they were incredibly um uh thought out books that that these men were getting and and you can you can even all the way up until the 20s or 30s um in the 1900s you can see um images of of homes that had like 50 books on the wall yes and i find that is what's so much more interesting is and and telling of a man's life is which books did he decide to collect and keep knowing that the cost to get those books was of such a high value for him but the worth and owning them and being able to come back to them was something that was worth the struggle and worth the the difficulty in obtaining them maintaining them and and choosing the right ones for your collection yes yes absolutely yeah and i think we are privileged in this day and age to have easy access to books i mean most books are not uh extraordinarily expensive these days um but some of the great classics of literature were written for ordinary people they weren't written for the nobility or things like that for example uh les miserables okay yeah huge book i mean it's it's over a thousand pages um in the unabridged editions yeah and i've read it it's an amazing book very long incredible character development but um that was serialized originally that's right and that's how they used to publish books that's where chapters came from was they would be published in like weekly newspapers and things like that um but they were just bought by common men on the street oftentimes and they would be instead of instead of modern forms of entertainment uh like youtube right they would go to the they would go to the stand on the corner and buy um the latest installment in this unfolding story um so it was it was a great way for just people to find light entertainment but also was often very educated educating to the common people and the level the level of things that people used to read ordinary people used to read is like you know college level these days yeah back then it was just it was just what people read so uh i find it fascinating that you know what literature is in great literature isn't just for the elite it really is for everyone yeah i like what you said and you got me thinking about in les miserables is that i used to the first time i read one of those books i read the kind of monte cristo um by dumas yes and it was like that it's like 800 and some pages and um and i uh you know i ended up and there there were periods right because they got paid often for the length and stuff like that so there are areas that like in les miserables i know that they talk like a whole chapter on the sewer system and and friends and so um but what's so fun is that i've got a close friend uh you know listener to the episodes and stuff and he um i remember it must have been in high school or just beyond that he picked up the kind of monte cristo and he thought he had read the whole thing but he had read the abridged version which was like 450 pages like the abridged version was a huge book you know and uh and that's been a funny uh running joke between us is you know do do we get the abridged version well if it's 400 pages let's do that and um and so uh it is it's it's real um fun history so i do i think there's a joy involved in collecting books and owning books but something i guess i'll just ask you sam is why physical books versus say kindle books and i know you and i both have both but um but what what are some of the benefits of of just owning that that physical book would you say yeah and it it can be kind of unwieldy at times taking up space i mean having a big library is nice except for when you have to move them it's very irritating but uh but no the physical books there's several reasons first of all they've done research studies on this and on kindle books you don't remember the content as well there's something about the the medium that makes it not impress itself on your memory quite as well so that's that's a problem you want to retain what you read and i don't know why it is exactly scientifically but they do say that a physical book you remember what you read more effectively second you don't actually own the books that are on your kindle even though you're paying for them i've heard horror stories of people who you know collected a decent library on their kindle and then all of a sudden they went got on their device one day and amazon had decided to purge the books in their library and they were just taken off their kindle so really they're kind of just loaning them to you in a digital format whereas a book someone would literally have to break into your house and like take it off your shelf for it to be taken from you so that's another just practical consideration like books are much more permanent they're going to be around a lot longer and then the third reason i would say is to me collecting a library isn't just about you it's about posterity too i can hand my library down to my kids someday and they can build on it and enhance it even more but a kindle book isn't the same a kindle's going to go obsolete at some point you know what's going to happen to those books is anybody's guess but a physical book it can be handed down and then lastly i would say i have not i mean most of my books aren't this way but i do have some books that are just real treasures either they're antiques or they were gift and they have a beautiful inscription inside um or they're just a physically beautiful book you know gilded pages or you know kind of uh artistically laid out letters or things like that you can't get that same experience in a in a kindle so to me those are some of the few advantages of having actual physical books you can pass them on they're actually yours they're a lot more permanent and they can just be plain beautiful i love that um i think another thing with physical books that uh that i like to connect myself with is that by taking up that spatial relationship in your life they beckon you right so when you have books that are on display you you are are almost called to pick them up right and that and actually everything in your life calls to you and we're going to have another episode on on living simply but but in a very beautiful way with books the idea is that i could binge watch on youtube or netflix or you know do something less meaningful or purposeful or intentional in our lives or i could pick up one of these books that that can help me grow in knowledge and wisdom and by them merely being there it helps and in fact when i started getting into um requiring myself to to read more um making time to read more i purposely would set out like 30 books and i would have them visually prominent in my life because every single day five times a day i would see those books and i'd be like yep that's the resolution that i made so i would like to go get those books right and i don't think that that should be um uh under understated because it is so helpful there's also the fact i liked what you said about posterity and that actually got me into the thought of of present day evangelization right that there is something with physical books that speak of you because when you think about a kindle or something along those lines i mean i liken it to the pictures that are on our phone like we'll take thousands of pictures on our phone that we probably will never look at again in our lives or never have time to look through all of them right and instead of living in the moment we're trying to capture every moment and and the same thing goes with kindle books is that you start cr amassing a library of hundreds of kindle books um never mind the fact that you don't fully own them but you're gonna forget what's there um versus having those physical books in front of you that you can connect with and that you can visually see and other people see too and so back to that that other people can see them and how many times have we set up a collection of books in our house my wife and i and people come through and it's it's like a magnet people go over there right and they just start looking at the book titles that you have right which also means get rid of junk books you know in your collection as well because you know you don't want to be identified now having those conversations but like you said getting rid of um you know some of the the protestant books or things like that you know and in amassing there's there's truth to that right we grow and evolve in our lives and our in our bookshelf and our book collection can do the same so yes yeah yeah no you're so true it's so so true what you're saying because there's been times but sometimes on a sunday afternoon i'll just go in my library room and just look at my books and i'll find one oh i forgot i had that and i pull it off and i'll flip through it and i'll take a nugget away from that and um you know there's books on my kindle i completely forgot about like i have no idea that i even have them because you have to scroll through pages and pages to see them even so anyway it is absolutely a joy to have now not everyone has to have as big a library as me and there's people with bigger libraries than me not everyone has to do that but look you know start picking out some that are really worth having some real classics uh you know it doesn't have to be you know junk uh pulp fiction novels um that are 50 cents each or not that kind of book but i'm saying like real books of substance it's good for people to have a few of those on their shelf agreed so going back to calling the hearts of men i like to talk about how we get to uphold this tradition within the catholic church and how beautiful that is right we are the protectors and the perpetuators of knowledge and wisdom by our collections by the posterity that we can pass on to our children and things like that and and the fact that we get to unite ourselves to the history within this church this very rich and beautiful history often filled with like battles and and and everything like that and i'm not talking about the pages of books i'm literally talking about the the saving of books you know in in that time period is we can uphold that tradition and we can carry that that standard and we do we have an obligation and that calls to to to our hearts and in something that we get to um carry on which i think is just a beautiful thing and it fills me with uh a lot of joy and purpose when it comes to collecting books yeah absolutely now a lot of people might be listening to this and thinking i want to get started i want to start building my library but i don't really know how to go about that so maybe we could talk a little bit about you know what to look for what kind of books to collect yeah i think that's a great thing and uh we could talk on this for for quite a while um i do think that there are a lot of ways that we can start collecting books and maybe we should come out with an episode on like books every catholic man should own right and come up with a list of of our you know top hundred books or something like that maybe that's a blog post but um but there are different ways that we can start collecting books and one of the ways that i honestly and we'll start here there's there's maybe better ways but one of the ways the fun ways that i've found in collecting books is the footnotes of sections and so i will um fall in love with the book right it used it happened for me when i was in college and getting into arguments with people uh on the catholic faith so i went to a college that had a lot of reformed calvinists at the um at the at the school and they would attack me for the eucharist and for confession and things like that so i started getting into apologetics and every once in a while i'd come across like a um like a patrick madrid book or um you know even frank sheed or something like that you know i would come across one of these books and i'd be like this is amazing like i i want to be able to think like this yeah and so what i started doing is i would go through the footnotes or i would go through the um the bibliography section in the back and i would start looking at the books that they read or attributed to this book and i would start creating collections like that and i would have it in my mind right so i wasn't um financially you know well off so that i could just go and buy all 10 of these books so what i would do is i would have them on my mind and i would buy one book and then the next time i would go you know kind of with this attitude of saving books from from half price books and stuff like that is i would go to these sections and i would i would i my sisters god bless them they are fully aware of how i would do this is i would walk into half price books i would be lined to the religion section and they had like the little catholic bookshelf and i would just go like this and look for look for those books and see if i could find any ended up getting about 20 30 books over the course of a few years um that became a part of my collection yeah absolutely i thought i think that's a great approach i mean for me personally it's yeah just taking note of those significant names um and kind of building a little mental catalog because you never know what you're going to come across at a book store um you know used bookstore or you know barnes and noble or half-price books or one of these places um stuff just kind of is there and you have to know what's important and what it isn't and so building a little mental library of names that you're keeping an eye out for so like you there's been times when i've gone to a used bookstore and i'll see a book and the author's name looks so familiar and i can't place where but i'm like i'm just going to get that book because that author's name sounds familiar yeah then i get home and i like look it up and i'm like oh that's why yeah i'm so glad i got that and there's been some too where i bought a book because it had a familiar sounding author and then later i'll be reading another book and i'll come across that name again oh wait i have that book because i collect you know and so it's just kind of a funny way of doing it but but it is is familiarizing yourself with you know if you're looking for catholic books the great figures in catholic literature's no-brainer i mean i just was at the used bookstore in tulsa and found um a book on st teresa of avila um it was one of her books and a new translation oh sure well i saw it because i was looking for it so to speak you see what you're looking for when you're presented with thousands of choices you see what you're looking for your mind kind of filters for what sounds familiar what looks familiar so build your kind of mental catalog and that'll help you filter through and you'll never know what you might come across at a bookstore so yeah absolutely other ways that we can develop uh collections is a simple way is by our authors right and you kind of were talking about that but maybe we fall in love with frank sheed and i use him because he's just popped in my mind and so i want to collect every book on this author or maybe it's tolkien right yes um maybe it's cs lewis maybe we fall in love with one of these authors we read one of the books you read the line the witch in the wardrobe or you read the hobbit or you probably didn't read the samarillion first and then think oh i love tolkien and if you did you don't need this episode um and it's a great book but we can find these authors and then we can just start collecting those authors and you can literally look at how many books they read like uh dickens is a great example right so i had to read great expectations i kind of thought it was okay and then i read a tale of two cities and i kind of had to struggle with it and then i read a christmas carol and i really enjoyed that and then i read david copperfield and it became one of my favorite books you know and david copperfield is by far the largest book out of all of them but but it i just fell in love with it and then i wanted to read everything dickens right so um that goes a little bit into the psychology of reading but i'd say collecting these authors um can be a great way of starting your collection yeah exactly and of course most people even if they're not a big book of aficionados recognizes a lot of the the great names in world literature and if you don't familiarize yourself with them but pick up some of their books if you see them barnes noble has like a super cheap collection of some of the great great books of world literature and very affordable editions so you can mix them up that way costco also has has regularly has great classics and pretty nice you know gilded page books for 15 bucks or something like that um but another way of approaching it is kind of a topical collection so of course you and i love theology and things like that but that may not be everybody's thing maybe you're into sailing or you know history or cooking or military history or things like that go to a used bookstore find one in your area there's almost certainly unless you live in the absolute middle of nowhere there's almost certainly a used book store in your area so look it up go and just find your topic and there's almost certainly going to be a fascinating book on your topic of choice and just start collect building a little collection um so that the topical collection can be a a fun way of doing it as well yeah and actually something you said just kind of inspired me you started talking about history and biographies can fit into that too so you know i um this year have planned on reading a biography on benjamin franklin and on uh teddy roosevelt yes and uh two men that i admired and i'd love to read either a biography or an autobiography of them you know and i think that's um a great place to start too is maybe this year you're going to collect you know 10 biographies again of course you have to enjoy reading biographies but if that's you it's a great way of getting started um and something we didn't even prepare but as you were talking about history that just uh is is an excellent thing yeah so i think what we're talking about here though is expanding your mind like we're drowning in information in the 21st century and sometimes it's almost paralyzing there's just so much out there but really i think we're all talking about being gentlemen and striving to cultivate our minds expand our minds and all great men through history read about any of them they all did this they were always learning throughout their entire life yeah remember we were kind of talking before the show about like general george patton yeah amazing like military tactician extremely um brilliant soldier but he also read widely he read vast amount of different kinds of books and honestly it probably made him a better soldier just learning about different fields so like exp you know we've all met people who are just fixated on one topic and it kind of gets boring after a while like okay just that that's nice i'm glad you're interested in that expand your mind a little bit like maybe read about something else i mean for some people it's sports or or some people it's even theology that's the only thing they know yeah like there are other dimensions of life and i think the world is an incredible fascinating place god made an amazing world keep your curiosity open cultivate that seek out other topics of interest even if you have to wrestle with it even if it's a little bit of a struggle yeah we grow through struggle right that's right so maybe read a book that's a little challenging and i read war and peace and i'm not going to lie it took me like a year and a half to get through it i've heard this yes and it was it was tough going at points i mean it was a long book but i'm glad i read it and i feel like i enriched my life having read that book and i can think of other examples like that so just because it's hard doesn't mean you should quit yeah stick with it a little bit even if it's not your your favorite thing it's still helping you grow and still enriching your mind and and expanding it yeah exactly and i think that um you know kind of going to this um how did you say it sam the shoulders of giants but what did you say about you know kind of reading what they read or living what they oh yeah if you ever if you ever want to understand a great man look to his masters yeah i looked his masters exactly thank you and and and that's exactly it is that's an another way and but and it's it's kind of an honor to be able to to do that and to collect these and to involve ourselves with these and i really liked what you're saying because we are called to be renaissance men in a way right that's the term we use today but it's it's a well-rounded man it's it's somebody that can have conversations with a wide um uh swath of individuals you know and their interests and when you can think of guys like that i know i can think of one a professor that i had named dennis turner where i um was walking up with a friend of mine who is a classical guitar major um really amazing um guitarist and i introduced him to this theology professor there and he found out he was a classical guitarist and this theology professor was able to just carry on a conversation about classical guitar yes i remember just being blown away and i was like he knew more about classical guitar than i did and i was a music major yes and i was just like wow this is incredible and um and so but it didn't he didn't have that ability from childhood right it's something that that he worked on he cultivated he um he understood the worth and the value of it and now he's he is a guy that people like to have conversations with because you know he has expanded and broadened his horizons so um we really encourage people to do that and it's a lifelong journey i mean i have a personal motto never stop learning like just never quit like you should be alive when i'm 85 i still want to be learning you know because there's always more to learn so that's right maybe you set a goal for yourself uh this year you're going to read five classics right and if you don't know what the classics are google right if you um mortimer adlers write his his um great books um you can take a look at those and just don't plan on reading them all right you can't read it um some people can but unless your job allows 100 books in a year or something but now just pick like five you know five that look interesting to you that that you would like to and then um uh i like what you said but work with the struggle right of of of requiring that find time throughout your day that you can you can pick it up and you can just read five pages 10 pages and you're really going to grow in that knowledge and it's going to be um again a worthwhile pursuit throughout your life and something that you can connect with the history and tradition of the church yes so yeah amen awesome well i think we're rounding it out here and it's time for our night cap that's right yeah so one thing that we think makes a great addition to any library is a globe they are just cool all right you know we we all remember growing up with them in our classrooms or maybe we saw one in the public library but um you look at a lot of pictures online of beautiful libraries they often have like a standing globe or like some other kind of globe and it really is just kind of cool to spin it and look at it and they're kind of fun we kind of they don't they've kind of uh faded away into obscurity now that we all have digital devices and can look up directions easily but but there's still something compelling about a globe yeah there really is and it is i was talking there's like a certain mysticism for my youth right with globes and you'd get you'd go to school and you'd have those long um uh maps that you know pulled down right and they were just you know so flat but there's something about the globe where you could really see throughout it and and yeah we we really encourage our our listeners to um to invest in a globe and and to you know uh it's something to to be admired and um yeah that's right i have a station so it's been a great episode and as we end every episode be a man be a saint [Music] you

Channel: The Catholic Gentleman

Views: 16,463

Keywords: Building A Library, Catholic, Catholic Podcast, Catholic Radio, Catholic TV, Catholic Show, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Catholic Gentleman, John Heinen, Sam Guzman

Id: 3FvD52B1v-Q

Length: 39min 23sec (2363 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 23 2022