The Pleasure of Books is a radio address by William Lyon Phelps, a university

professor, literary critic and popular speaker. It was broadcasted in 1933. The purpose of this

text is a justification of owning books, which is evident in the opening sentence of the text

“The habit of reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind; and we enjoy reading

books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed”. The author targets an

audience of people who do not share the passion of his. The text argues for owning books by

building pathos. It does this by analyzing the emotional, visual and social appeal of books

and their ownership.

In the two opening paragraphs, the author builds pathos by contrasting the emotions

one has when owning a book. Firstly, it discusses the situation one is in when having a

borrowed book. The short and quick sentences create a feeling like one is reading rules.

Repetition of “You must” and “you cannot” and diction such as “punctiliousness”,

“formality” and “damage” add to this, creating an atmosphere where one can not relax and

enjoy. With it the author tries to create in the listener a negative emotion connected with

borrowing a book. As this is done, there is a quick contrast made between this feeling and the

one of owning a book. The text implies that there is a sort of intimate and personal pleasure

of owning a book. There is a great use of second person pronoun which has an effect of

creating this intimate and personal feeling in the audience. By saying “belongs to you” and

“you have a pleasure” it makes the text personal and therefore appeals to the pathos, with the

purpose of arguing that one should own books.

In the following paragraph the author uses superlatives and comparatives to represent

the visual appeal of owning books, and therefore represent them as desirable and appeal to

pathos. The use of “the best of mural decorations”, “more varied in colour and appearance”,

and “more attractive” shows why books could be desirable visually as well. Additionally,
these descriptions create imagery of the author's own room with six thousand books. The

purpose behind it is to create a feeling of awe in the audience and raise in them a natural

question if he read all of the books he owns. Quickly the author offered the question himself,

as he is reading the thoughts of the audience, showing his superiority in this argument.

The text continues to argue for owning books now through the social appeal of books.

The author makes a comparison, similarly as in opening, between real and book-friends. With

the comparison, he does not contrast the two friends completely, as he said advantages of

both. He makes a point that there are no better friends than people. It seems like this is

needed to be stated, due to the common prejudice that book lovers become unsocial, and the

author quickly denies it. His statement “books are of the people, by the people, for the

people” explains why that would be impossible, as books are created by people, and

therefore, he is interested in people as well. This sentence also brings books and reading

closer to the audience that is that familiar with it. It teases the reader to read, as the might

relate to books, and finding something to relate to is a human, constant, social need. The text

offers a solution to another social need. It suggests that books are the perfect solution to the

lack of real people. They contrast the accessibility of books to the absence of friends.

Contrasting books ability to be the solution for online and boredom makes them desirable, as

loneliness and boredom are very unwanted feeling. Additionally, this solution is made better

when offering their “supernatural” ability to make you friends with dead and alive, to make

your travel to other societies and all from your room. This appeal to the pathos, as it argues

that book kills unwanted feelings and offers the possibility of adventure and joy.

The author argues for owning books. He talks about different values that come with

owning books, appealing to pathos. It shows how one can have emotional, social and visual

satisfaction by owning their books. The text defends the authors passion by trying to persuade

others to adopting it
 Good work, Saska. You’ve succeeded at hitting most of the major points: audience,

purpose, and formal and stylistic features.

You can elaborate a little more on the context. The diction in this radio address stands

out as erudite and of a high socio-economic class. You identified some of this language, like

“punctiliousness,” but I will add words like “perchance,” phrases like “that affectionate

intimacy that annihilates formality” and “you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society” as

evidence of education and socio-economic level necessary to access the text. The address is

exclusionary as it speaks to an audience that 1) understands the verbiage, and 2) is familiar

with habits like visiting forests, appreciating murals, proliferating private libraries, and

“conversing” with Shakespeare, Carlyle, Dumas, etc. There is an overarching sense of irony Commented [1]: Don't use etc. Just because I did,
doesn't mean you can. Life isn't fair. ;)
then, because, though I agree that the purpose is to convince the audience to own books and

create a library, he is likely speaking to an audience that already does this.

A- 4

B-4

C-5

D-3