I find such suggestions irresistible, even when they are autosuggestions, which is why, I think, I have come so passionately to distrust reading lists. I used to try to determine in advance what books I would read over the summer, but eventually realized that to put any book on such a list nearly guaranteed that I would not read it. No matter how anxiously I had been anticipating it, as soon as it took its place among the other assigned texts it became as broccoli unto me—and any book not on the list, no matter how unattractive it might appear in other contexts, immediately became as desirable
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