{...} he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been...

{...} he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years.
"That's the only kind of book I can trust", he said.
"It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.