I’ve posted before on this blog about my annual reading plan (here), which I’ve done for most of my life to keep my reading varied and voluminous, year after year.

So it will come as no surprise to those who know me or know of my reading plan that I strongly advise reading both new books and old books, especially for writers. Thus, two of the categories in my annual reading plan are “classics” and “new authors.”

For example, this year my classics category includes:

Summer’s Lease (Mortimer)
Requiem for a Nun (Faulkner)
Mosquitos (Faulkner)
Middlemarch (Eliot)
Adam Bede (Eliot)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)

And the books by authors I haven’t read before this year are:

This Tender Land (Krueger)
Ordinary Grace (Krueger)
A Book of Uncommon Prayer (Doyle)
Mink River (Doyle)
The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World (Doyle)
The Call: The Desire to Finish Strong (Doyle)

Numerous other categories afford the opportunity to read both old (even ancient) and more recent books, but those two tend to ensure that my reading will span centuries (sometimes even millennia, as some years I’ve included Josephus, Homer, Chaucer, and others in my “classics” goals).

I think a balanced literary diet of books both old and new helps a writer in many ways. It broadens my vocabulary. It alerts me to the ever-changing conventions in both fiction and nonfiction. It reminds me that great writing can transcend changes in language and culture. And helps me to see how more recent writing employs or adapts techniques that have stood the test of time.

How about you? Do you read both old and new books? Why? Please do tell in the comments.