Quote:
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"In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores."
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I'm very late to this party but I have something to add about the phrase 'curious natures'.
Because he is talking about people, this has absolutely NOTHING to do with 'nature' as in scenery and the natural world/animals. He is talking about ~characters~ and ~personality~. When we talk of someone's 'nature' it's referring to their character or personality, or their habits.
EXAMPLES: "The act of killing," said the snake, "Is in my nature."
"She was shy in nature."
"He had a truly inconsistent nature; sometimes generous, sometimes aloof."
"It is her nature to talk a walk everyday at noon."
Although when we use 'nature' it's a little more than a habit. More like a behavior that is so ingrained that it defines the person who does it.
Curious here is used to show that the people he meets are interesting, not that they are themselves curious about things. It implies that they are unusual people, slightly eccentric maybe. The phrased 'opened up' also suggests that the people are reserved about their differences and it's only because he doesn't judge that they've told him about it.
So the case is "Because of this (advice from his father), I don't judge people I meet right away, which has meant that I've met some really unusual people, and also some terribly boring ones."
This is getting into the heavy side of literature, I think, and judging from some of the huge misunderstandings of the phrase by other posters, not as well understood as plain English. This goes beyond mere words and grammar- this has a lot more to do with literary interpretation. Even British kids spend as much as 5 years or more studying this in school so it's not enough just to speak English competently.
So be careful because you'll get more misinformation for this type of language than you would do normally.
As for books, if you speak/talk like Jane Austen today, you'll sound very odd. Scott Fitzgerald died in the 1940's, that's pre WW2! He might be a 'modern' writer in terms of era, but his English is old; do people in Japan still speak and write like they did in 1940?
Even Hemingway is a little old-fashioned now and he died in 1961. But spoken English has moved on rapidly since then; the general lexicon has changed as fast as technology has. You could still write like him, though, without it seeming too odd.
If you can, try and find something that was published in the last 10 years. If you let me know the kind of book you want, I can maybe suggest some titles.