There are three books I reread annually. The first, which I take to reading every spring, is Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Published in 1964, it’s his classic memoir of 1920s Paris. The language is almost intoxicating (令人陶醉的)，an aging writer looking back on an ambitious yet simpler time. Another is Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, her poetic 1975 ramble (随笔) about everything and nothing. The third book is Julio Cortazar’s Save Twilight: Selected Poems, because poetry. And because Cortazar.

Reading Art: Art for Book Lovers is a celebration of an everyday object — the book, represented here in almost three hundred artworks from museums around the world. The image of the reader appears throughout history, in art made long before books as we now know them came into being. In artists’ representations of books and reading, we see moments of shared humanity that go beyond culture and time.

In this “book of books,” artworks are selected and arranged in a way that emphasizes these connections between different eras and cultures. We see scenes of children learning to read at home or at school, with the book as a focus for relations between the generations. Adults are portrayed (描绘) alone in many settings and poses —absorbed in a volume, deep in thought or lost in a moment of leisure. These scenes may have been painted hundreds of years ago, but they record moments we can all relate to.

Books themselves may be used symbolically in paintings to demonstrate the intellect (才智), wealth or faith of the subject. Before the wide use of the printing press, books were treasured objects and could be works of art in their own right. More recently, as books have become inexpensive or even throwaway, artists have used them as the raw material for artworks — transforming covers, pages or even complete volumes into paintings and sculptures.

Continued developments in communication technologies were once believed to make the printed page outdated. From a 21st-century point of view, the printed book is certainly ancient, but it remains as interactive as any battery-powered e-reader. To serve its function, a book must be activated by a user: the cover opened, the pages parted, the contents reviewed, perhaps notes written down or words underlined. And in contrast to our increasingly networked lives where the information we consume is monitored and tracked, a printed book still offers the chance of a wholly private, “off-line” activity.

I was about 13 when an uncle gave me a copy of Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World. It was full of ideas that were new to me, so I spent the summer with my head in and out of that book. It spoke to me and brought me into a world of philosophy (哲学).

That love for philosophy lasted until I got to college. Nothing kills the love for philosophy faster than people who think they understand Foucault, Baudrillard, or Confucius better than you — and then try to explain them.

Eric Weiner’s The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers reawakened my love for philosophy. It is not an explanation, but an invitation to think and experience philosophy.

Weiner starts each chapter with a scene on a train ride between cities and then frames each philosopher’s work in the context (背景) of one thing they can help us do better. The end result is a read in which we learn to wonder like Socrates, see like Thoreau, listen like Schopenhauer, and have no regrets like Nietzsche. This, more than a book about understanding philosophy, is a book about learning to use philosophy to improve a life.

He makes philosophical thought an appealing exercise that improves the quality of our experiences, and he does so with plenty of humor. Weiner enters into conversation with some of the most important philosophers in history, and he becomes part of that crowd in the process by decoding (解读) their messages and adding his own interpretation.

The Socrates Express is a fun, sharp book that draws readers in with its apparent simplicity and gradually pulls them in deeper thoughts on desire, loneliness, and aging. The invitation is clear: Weiner wants you to pick up a coffee or tea and sit down with this book. I encourage you to take his offer. It’s worth your time, even if time is something we don’t have a lot of.

Why does the author list great philosophers in paragraph 4?