Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

What you read shapes what kind of mind you end up with, and different material builds different faculties. Time with history gives you a sense of how things actually go; poetry sharpens your ear; mathematics trains you to hold a long chain without dropping a link. A person who reads only one kind of thing becomes formidable in one direction and oddly thin in the others. That thinness is usually invisible from the inside.

Look at what you have read this year and name the shape it is making. Then pick one book from a category you avoid, and read it badly and slowly rather than not at all.