Dr. Sterling ‘Skip’ Eisiminger, a retired professor of English at Clemson University, led a discussion titled ‘The Joy of Reading’ at the Central-Clemson Library the afternoon of Sunday, June 21, 2026. The event was sponsored by the South Carolina Humanities Council.

The program, he said, was not only about the joy of reading but also the value of reading, and he stated, “The consequences of illiteracy are dire. They are often very, very serious.

“Reading enlarges your sympathies,’ he said, and enlarging one’s sympathies enables one to understand people not like yourself, he added.

He read a quote from William Lyon Phelps: “There are two classes of readers, those who read to remember and those who read to forget.” Eisiminger asked, “What’s he missing there, though? What about reading to learn? Learning to understand?

“A little nugget of my own: ‘Read like the cat burglar who passes on the costume jewelry and pockets the pearl of great price.’ If you want to understand the human condition, I would recommend Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Steinbeck and writers like that.”

An author and an instructor for Osher Lifelong Learning Insitute (OLLI) at Clemson University, Eisiminger retired from teaching English at Clemson in 2017, after having taught for more than 40 years.

He is pictured with his wife, Ingrid, after the special event at the Central-Clemson library.