Former replies were analytic, this one will be synthetic - and based on tone, given the hardly manageable replies proposed.
> pretentious
Wait until the first doctor maims you, the first renovator ruins your house, the first moron ruins your life.
Then it will be clear that you must "strive" not just for your ideals (or even ambitions), but because you are a social actor and you have to be an asset, not a liability.
So, "pastime", "fun", "pretentious", "smug", "high-class", "bullshit" - I am tempted to quite a crude language to label the whole perspective, I am just restraining myself. You have to be not even "quite something" in what you are, which will reflect on others: you have to be "decent", and already that is very far to be possibly taken for granted. Not just for yourself or anything: because you can be a damage, and you are required not to be a damage. For duty.
Already if you operate among people, cultivation is not just an option.
--
Edit: I forgot (important point linking the above with another side of the importance of books): in many territories a socio-cultural crisis is evident where one of the main mechanisms to transmit civilization and refinement, i.e. structured society at the base, the "extended family" which includes the teacher, the older brother, the neighbour etc., is vanishing. This model was structured, some say "pyramidal" (the "older brother" takes care of the "younger" - the "elder" of the "younger" in general); other societal models (e.g. "online") are heavily random and noisy; even education is (stats also prove) living a dire crisis.
The "book" is, as I already stated, a "selected companion" that is remains even more fundamental in order to patch the gaps in proficuous relations that said crisis, made of distance and weakened roles, has created. Some of the best men we had gave us their wisdom for tradition - not a small gift at all.
> pretentious
Wait until the first doctor maims you, the first renovator ruins your house, the first moron ruins your life.
Then it will be clear that you must "strive" not just for your ideals (or even ambitions), but because you are a social actor and you have to be an asset, not a liability.
So, "pastime", "fun", "pretentious", "smug", "high-class", "bullshit" - I am tempted to quite a crude language to label the whole perspective, I am just restraining myself. You have to be not even "quite something" in what you are, which will reflect on others: you have to be "decent", and already that is very far to be possibly taken for granted. Not just for yourself or anything: because you can be a damage, and you are required not to be a damage. For duty.
Already if you operate among people, cultivation is not just an option.
--
Edit: I forgot (important point linking the above with another side of the importance of books): in many territories a socio-cultural crisis is evident where one of the main mechanisms to transmit civilization and refinement, i.e. structured society at the base, the "extended family" which includes the teacher, the older brother, the neighbour etc., is vanishing. This model was structured, some say "pyramidal" (the "older brother" takes care of the "younger" - the "elder" of the "younger" in general); other societal models (e.g. "online") are heavily random and noisy; even education is (stats also prove) living a dire crisis.
The "book" is, as I already stated, a "selected companion" that is remains even more fundamental in order to patch the gaps in proficuous relations that said crisis, made of distance and weakened roles, has created. Some of the best men we had gave us their wisdom for tradition - not a small gift at all.