The 3900
The Chinese philosopher, Confucius, was once asked: how long is a life? One breath was the reply. No more. The length of a life boils down to 3900 books. Now, 3900 might sound like a new and upcoming sci-fi TV series, but it’s actually based on an average person living to the age of 76, who just so happens to read a book per week. On the face of it, 3900 books doesn’t seem a lot.
Upon learning of this fact, my initial reaction was one of despair. My extensive canon of literature (my gloried library in other words) boils down to Dan Brown, Fantasy masterworks, and various graphic novels that entail such words as ‘zap’ and ‘pow.’
Oh dear… imagine my disgust, and embarrassment upon learning that I had only read one of the all-time classics, and in all honesty, I didn’t know ‘The Three Musketeers’ counted! When my learned friends found out about this, I was berated for ignoring the classics, painted as some sort of philistine. Apparently, your high school English teacher was right. You should have ploughed through ‘Catcher in the rye,’ you should have been put off literature for good and endured ‘Far from the madding crowd,’ and if you knew what was good for you, ‘Ulysses’ should have kept you in on a Saturday night! Instead, like every teenager who has ever lived, you were lured away by the promise of cheap alcohol and good times.
On reflection, however, the figure of 3900 books is a golden opportunity to re-visit your reading habits. There is always a sense that you ‘have’ to read a book, rather than wanting to read a book. Whenever annual polls on the 100 best books of all time are published, it is depressingly full of the usual suspects and anybody that dares question this is as popular as a return ticket on the Titanic! That is not to say that these works are not without merit, but instead of becoming swayed by orthodox thinking, read what you like. As long as you read freely and with pleasure, it should matter not if your preferred book of choice is Roger Moore’s biography, rather than James Joyce.
Upon learning of this fact, my initial reaction was one of despair. My extensive canon of literature (my gloried library in other words) boils down to Dan Brown, Fantasy masterworks, and various graphic novels that entail such words as ‘zap’ and ‘pow.’
Oh dear… imagine my disgust, and embarrassment upon learning that I had only read one of the all-time classics, and in all honesty, I didn’t know ‘The Three Musketeers’ counted! When my learned friends found out about this, I was berated for ignoring the classics, painted as some sort of philistine. Apparently, your high school English teacher was right. You should have ploughed through ‘Catcher in the rye,’ you should have been put off literature for good and endured ‘Far from the madding crowd,’ and if you knew what was good for you, ‘Ulysses’ should have kept you in on a Saturday night! Instead, like every teenager who has ever lived, you were lured away by the promise of cheap alcohol and good times.
On reflection, however, the figure of 3900 books is a golden opportunity to re-visit your reading habits. There is always a sense that you ‘have’ to read a book, rather than wanting to read a book. Whenever annual polls on the 100 best books of all time are published, it is depressingly full of the usual suspects and anybody that dares question this is as popular as a return ticket on the Titanic! That is not to say that these works are not without merit, but instead of becoming swayed by orthodox thinking, read what you like. As long as you read freely and with pleasure, it should matter not if your preferred book of choice is Roger Moore’s biography, rather than James Joyce.
No comments have been added yet.
