One Thousand and Two

. . . gums to chew, before they dump you in the stew.

I am a bit of a bibliophile, or perhaps bibliomaniac, but when I contemplate the approaching footsteps of mortal doom I can't say that I worry about which of the top 1001 novels I haven't read. So I probably am not in the target audience for 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Come to think of it, though, is anyone?

Hungry authors must eat, of course, and if inspiration fails, maybe putting together a long list of books obscure and un is one way to fill the pages. I suppose that I have read a couple of thousand novels in my lifetime, though my input has declined dramatically in the last forty years. I'm just not that big a reader of novels.

I certainly don't dislike novels, in and of themselves. War and Peace, Anna Karenina and a few others are permanent pieces of my mental furniture. A good novel, like any good relationship, is a substantial psychic investment, and it's costly when it goes wrong. You can wind up investing weeks and a lot of energy in reading a long book and have it turns out to be Gravity's f#$@%&g Rainbow. What a waste of neurons!

I don't read many novels any more, and when I do read one, it's only occasionally a "serious" or "literary" one. I recall some NYT column where young editorial types were talking about "life changing" novels. If you have a life, how many times do you want to change it, anyway?

I may also be slightly influenced by an anecdote I heard about Dirac. After a visit to the US in the 1930s, he was preparing for the long sea voyage back to Britain. Someone offered him a book to read on the trip. He declined. "Reading," he said, "inhibits thought." I have always envied that. I would love to have thoughts interesting and important enough that I couldn't stand to be parted from them, even for a bit.

That said, it might be nice to have a much shorter list of entertaining books to read while we wait in that waiting room for the great dentist appointment in the sky.

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