--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Brimhall, George H. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 15 number: 9 published: 1912-07 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'George H. Brimhall, "The Reading Course, 1912–13," *Improvement Era* 15, no. 9 (July 1912): 858–859.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1509unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1509unse start_page: 858 end_page: 859 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1912-07) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1509unse publication_year: 1912 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1912, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Reading Course, 1912–13 The Reading Course, 1912-13 Dr. George H. Brimhall, chairman of the Library and Reading Course Committee, said of the present year's reading course, at the June convention: "It has been suggested that I refer to the Reading Course. I have been very much interested in that, because I know that if your child hasn't any better place to play he will play in the mud on the street. I know if a man's mind is not properly directed into good fields, it will get into bad fields. We have selected as our reading course, this year, six books. Three of these books are educational, and should be studied. They are text books of a character requiring what we might call work — a little brain work. The first one of these is Where One-half of the World is Waking Up, which treats of conditions in China and the Orient, in order that we may become able to think and talk rationally about that country; and the next is Mexican Trails, which treats of conditions in Mexico, so that a man may know something about Mexico, that the opinion he may express may have some little background. Then there is From River to Ocean, another book which is good reading to me. I started on it, and I read it right through. My fourteenyear-old boy had read it, and he wasn't more interested in it than I was. It treats of the sweep of civilzation by the fur-man, by the miner, by the great educator and the agriculturist, the great road-builders and desert-redeemers. And then we have the others, restful books, the recreative, The Winning of Barbara Worth, a bit of fiction which is calculated to inspire a general desire to do things, and perhaps a special desire to win things out of mother earth, to redeem the earth. That book, I will say, has had six hundred thousand readers in its career. It is quite a new book, too. There are some things in it that we would rather were different, but we cannot get a book that is just what we MUTUAL WORK. 859 want. Then we have the Piney Ridge Cottage, written by Brother Nephi Anderson. That is a very instructive and inspiring love story of a country girl in Utah. Then we have Metta, by Alfred Lambourne. This is a story that was printed in a series of articles in the Contributor, years ago, good literature that a man would be better by reading. That constitutes our course this year.