What I am reading

The title of the article that I am reading/read is: Kafka on Books and What Reading Does for the Human Soul
The author of this article is Maria Popov.

The article that I read was about a belief that man Franz Kafka had about what, and why we read something. He also explained what reading does to the soul. This article explains the letter Franz compromised for his friend and historian Oskar Pollak in 1904. He had his own opinion which I didn't necessarily agree with. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. He didn't ponder about what other people thought and therefore his opinion was mostly personal. He quoted: "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us." He mentioned that if a book makes us feel happy then that it is pretty much useless. I disagree with that because I believe that different types of books are made for us to feel different emotions. If we have the need to be happy, we would read a certain book which would make us feel happy.

Here is his letter: I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.

Franz Kafka:

The two woordly wise words I used were:ponder and compromise.

Ponder means: To think about;to consider carefully.

Compromise: To form;to make up.