Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.

Survival across generations is a rough but real filter. Something that has stayed useful through many different eras has been tested by people whose circumstances had nothing in common with yours, and whatever was merely fashionable has already fallen away. That does not make old things automatically better, and plenty that survived did so through accident or power.

When you are choosing what to read or what advice to trust, weight things that have lasted. If something has held up for two hundred years, it will probably still be useful next year, which is more than most of what arrived this month.