Reading and the Zerg

(from "Lenses" a book-length collection of essays in search of a publisher)

In the Starcraft game series, the Zerg are one of the races struggling for dominance. While there are many Zerg, they act together (more or less) as a single-entity, a single horde or hive. When they capture an opponent, they “assimilate” him or her, acquiring new strength, new powers, new perceptions.
Reading books is a bit like that assimilation.
I've been keeping lists of the books I read (and finish) since 1958, when I was in the seventh grade. In those 62 years, I've read over 3700 books. I'd like to believe that I have grown through the process, that thoughts and emotions of authors whose works I have read have become part of me and enriched me.
This feels like a variation on Auden's line in memory of Yeats, “The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.” Auden meant it ironically. He was writing from the perspective of the poet who on death “became his admirers,” ceased being himself. I'm thinking of that same phenomenon from the perspective of the reader. In that sense, as the words of dead men are modified in my “guts”, they become part of me; they nourish me; they give me strength.