Reading difficulties
December 30th, 2005
Joe Queenan’s friends keep sabotaging his reading list:
Several years ago, I calculated how many books I could read if I lived to my actuarially expected age. The answer was 2,138. In theory, those 2,138 books would include everything from “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” to “Le Colonel Chabert,” with titles by authors as celebrated as Marcel Proust and as obscure as Marcel Aymé. In principle, there would be enough time to read 500 masterpieces, 500 minor classics, 500 overlooked works of genius, 500 oddities and 138 examples of high-class trash. Nowhere in this utopian future would there be time for “Hi-Ho, Steverino!”
[…]
[I am sure…] I am not alone when I state that cavalierly foisting unsolicited reading material upon book lovers is like buying underwear for people you hardly know. Bibliophiles are ceaselessly engaged in the mental reconfiguration of a Platonic reading list that will occupy them for the next 35 years: First, I’ll get to “Buddenbrooks,” then “The Man Without Qualities,” then “The Decline of the West,” and finally “Finnegans Wake.” But I’ll never get to “Finnegans Wake” if I keep stopping to read books like “The Frontier World of Doc Holliday.”
Time management is not the only issue here. There is often something sinister about the motives of those who press books onto others. The urge to give “Elwood’s Blues” to someone who already owns unread biographies of Franz Schubert and Miles Davis smacks of sadism; the books serve as a taunt, a gibe, a threat, an insult. It is as if the lender himself wants to see how far another person can be pushed before he resorts to the rough stuff. […]
[Via feeling listless]
December 31st, 2005 at 1:37 am
“The answer was 2,138.”
At first I thought he meant “in my lifetime, from start to finish,” and I was going to comment on how strange that seemed for any sort of enthusiastic reader.
But being not in the mood to click the link for context just now (probably later), I realize the only way it would make sense, assuming the fellow is a reader, is that he meant “in the remainder of my life,” and that he’s not terribly young. And very busy with the rest of life.
I can swear in court (without perjuring myself) that I’d read more than 2500 books by age, let’s see, whip out calculator: okay, definitely by… 9, without a doubt.
I can show the math, if anyone likes.
Jeebus, I owned copies of over 2100 books I’d read in my room when I was 13 years old. Simple matter of recalling my shelf space, and cross-checking by recalling how many boxes, slightly vaguely, it took when I moved them out.
Then here are all the books I’d owned and gotten rid of for lack of shelf space, by then, let alone my parents’ books, let alone my aunt and uncle’s books, let alone the local library, let alone the school library, let alone the Main Branch of the library, let alone books borrowed from a variety of adults, such as other relatives or friends of my parents.
And although I read fast, these figures, or ones in the neighborhood, are similar to those of many of the friends I’ve ever had. Plenty of them have read far more more many books than IScientific American or any sort of magazines or periodicals, of course.
I just mean plain old books-for-adults, fiction and nonfiction, read from beginning to end, often several times. Not including “Finnegans Wake.” Volumes of the Encycopedias count, though, since I read them straight through. And, to be sure, about 50% was light, popular reading, so there’s that.
Nowadays, of course, I’m lucky to do a book a week; I read online instead. This isn’t wholly a good thing, and I’m meaning to go to the library more this next year.
Now I’ve thought about this too much.
December 31st, 2005 at 7:13 pm
From 1 January 2001 until 31 December 2005 I’ve read and finished 463 books (see my booklog for details on which books), which is approx. 93 books a year.
Assuming I’ll live until at least age 71, I should be able to read at least 40 x 93 = 3720 more books.
2138 books does not sound like much.
January 1st, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Huh. I wrote a couple of long other paragraphs in my original comment about how my reading level wasn’t at all unusual among my friends, and how I had, in fact, read far fewer books than many folks I’ve known, from Denny Lien to Mark Kellar to George Flynn to Don D’Ammassa to Dave Langford, and endless more. I mentioned that probably at least a quarter of NESFA had read more than me, and at least at various times in the past, a significant fraction of BSFA, and I went on like that for a bit, about how non-usual this was, and how if thousands of other fans read that much, obviously hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people around the world do.
Somehow I must have accidently sliced away several paragraphs when I was swiping the cursor back and forth. Darn. Oh, well. As usual, the original was much more clear and to the point. Or so I claim.
January 1st, 2006 at 1:09 pm
“non-usual”
Non-unusual, damnit.