“I’m too busy working and caring for my family to go back to school, so I’ve been keeping my mind alive by reading great books on my own,” a man named Robert was telling me recently at a book-signing event. “I’ve been following a reading schedule I found online, and I’ve replaced some of my TV-watching-time with reading-time. It’s just as relaxing, and much more inspiring.”

Robert, like many others, has discovered that access to humanity’s greatest minds has been made easy by the growth of the internet. In olden times, when I was growing up, say, you had to actually go somewhere to get access to a great book—to a library, or a bookstore, or a school. Now you can call up almost any great book at will on your web browser. And most of them are free!

On top of that, you can also find guidance on what to read, entire curricula to follow, book guides, and expert analyses. Here’s just a random sample of such resources:

Sites for finding books:

• http://www.anova.org
• http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/lists.html
• http://www.bartleby.com

Sites for reading lists and curricula:

• http://www.greatconversation.com/10-year-reading-plan
• https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/seminar/annapolis-undergraduate-readings
• https://thinkingasleverage.wordpress.com/book-lists/mortimer-adlers-reading-list/

If becoming familiar with the greatest writings and artworks of humankind appeals to you, nothing is stopping you from doing so—provided you have an internet connection. Just get a list, download some books, and start reading. That’s the way Robert got started. The accessibility of the material has never been greater.

But, as I mentioned in the previous post, the availability of the material is something else. What do I mean by “availability”?

Robert got into the matter as we continued talking. “I’ve been doing the reading for a few years now,” he said, “and I enjoy it immensely. But I feel that I’m not getting as much out of it as I could be. I’ve started listening to some of the Great Courses on the books or the authors, and those are very interesting as well. Yet I know that something is missing.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because some of the books engage me more than others. When that happens, I can’t stop thinking about the issues raised, and I often have insights that are new and inspiring. But other books don’t engage me as much. I read them, and it’s good knowing what’s in them, but I pass on without the book making much of an impact on me. Yet I know that these are all great books. So I must be missing something.”

Robert’s concern is pretty common. To understand it, we have to see that it’s not a matter of the readings engaging us; it’s about us engaging the readings.

The reason why some of the great books grab us more forcefully than others is that we are already inclined toward the issues raised by those particular books. When we come to them, we are already predisposed to see those issues as important and engaging. We arrive at these predispositions by upbringing, education, and life experience. Books that happen to deal with our predisposed interests are easier for us to engage with than books that don’t.

Or another way to put it is this: books that appeal to our predispositions are more available to us than books that don’t. And this is what I mean when I say that a liberal education is more accessible than ever, but not widely available.

The question is, How do we make more great books available to ourselves? If we were limited to engaging only the works that already appeal to our predispositions, we would, like Robert, come to understand that we were missing a great deal.

There is a difference between a well-read person and an educated one. If you read all the greatest works but only engage with those that appeal to your predispositions, you will end up knowing a lot but not expanding your horizons much—which is the point of education. It is likely that life will bring you experiences that will make some of the books more available to you than when you first read them. When that happens, you will want to read those again, because they have now become available to you.

But it would be a shame if your education had to be left up to chance in this way. How can we open ourselves up to works that aren’t yet available to us, to books that don’t already appeal to our predispositions?

The answer is simple, and it is the foundation of all genuine education, that is, learning directed toward expanding our intellectual, ethical, and practical horizons. The books become more accessible to us through serious conversation with others who also want to expand their horizons.

We can become interested in matters that don’t currently interest us by hearing the interests and concerns of others and realizing that we too have similar concerns, even if our lives haven’t yet brought those concerns to the forefront of our awareness.

If we want to get the most out of the great books, if we really want to educate ourselves, we bring the experiences of our reading out in the open through serious conversation.

More about this in the next post.