According to the prolific writer Umberto Eco whose personal library held 30,000 books, if one reads one book a day between the ages ten to eighty, that's only 25,000 volumes. There are so many books in print even the most dedicated reader can only scratch the literary surface. As a result, book lovers tend to own far more books than they could ever read. According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives because they remind us of how much we don't know. According to Taleb, read books are less valuable to us than unread ones.
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I've read every book in my house more than once...all 10,000 or more. I have 650 books of poetry. I began reading a book a day at age 6. I read the complete works of Mark Twain before I was 10. At age 12 I read the King James Bible and Gone With the Wind...twice. For as long as I remember, I've read up to 3 or more books per day, sometimes more. What good is an unread book? It's like putting a steak next to a starving man and telling him not to eat it. I call bullshit on that dumbass Taleb. He should stick to digits, not books. :-(
ReplyDeleteYou make a strong case for your point of view on this. Thank you.
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