The great libraries of the world contain millions of volumes, the equivalent of about 1014 bits of information in words, and perhaps 1015 bits in pictures. This is ten thousand times more information than in our genes, and about ten times more than in our brains. If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.
