What is a Good Book?: complete notes

Free preview: What is a Good Book? notes

A quick look at the chapter from our Class 11 English Core notes. The full chapter notes have the detailed explanations, diagrams and practice questions with answers.

Topics in this chapter ★★★ very important · ★★ important · ★ asked sometimes

1. 19.1 The essay in brief ★★★

Last-night summary

• Ruskin (1819–1900), critic; Sesame and Lilies.
• Books of the hour: talk printed; letters/newspapers in good print; useful but not true books.
• True book: written for permanence; preserves the voice; “This is the best of me… this I saw and knew.”
• Eternal court of the great dead; open to labour and merit only; “If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you.”
• Love the authors; seek their meaning; “How strange that is!”
• Gold-mining image: pickaxes = care, wit, learning; furnace = thoughtful soul.
• Accuracy: letter by letter; peerage of words; deadly work of unwatched words.
• Style: lecture: rhetorical questions, “And”, balanced sentences, analogies.

What is inside the full chapter notes

• The essay in brief; books of the hour vs books of all time
• Images, balance, rhetoric
• NCERT exercises, fully solved
• Exam-pattern questions, practice, MCQs, A–R