On Reading:
How many books will you read in your life?
May 13, 2014
“How many books will you read
in your life?” That question from my nephew started me
thinking. How many books have I
read? How many more will I have time to
read? I cannot remember a time when I did
not have a book or two within ready reach. Reading is almost like breathing: it is hard to imagine life without books.
My
earliest memory of books was standing in front of my father’s bookcase in our farmhouse in northern Minnesota. The bookshelves, located at the head of the
stairs on the second floor, stretched from floor to ceiling. I remember craning my head to look to the top
and knowing that there were many books out of reach. Even the ones I could touch were out of reach
given my reading level, yet I was curious about their content.
My
father's library had to be abandoned when we left northern Minnesota. Space in our home-made trailer was scarce and
books were not a priority in our move to the west. The books were boxed and
sold for ten cents a box. My father retained two boxes with some of his
favorites. In Oregon, those boxes were placed
in the attic of our new home. I was
eight when we moved and that attic became my place of refuge when family noise
or fights were too much to handle. I
could hide and read. Over the years, I
would open and paw through those boxes looking for books that interested me. In later years, my sister JoAn would join me
in searching for and reading those great books. Some, among them Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, were read and
re-read until the covers literally fell off. Marjorie Rawling's classic, The Yearling, was one that I put back a
number of times until I was ready for it.
I then used it for a book report, though it was not on the teacher’s recommended reading list.
The teacher asked, “Where did you find this?” and I told her about my special place. Treasuries
of Grand Opera and Dante’s Divine Comedy with the Durer wood prints were two favorites that
migrated to the living room of our home where my father’s library space was reduced to one meager wire rack. Years
later, I found these in used book stores; the same edition with the same
memorable pictures.
Some of
the books in those boxes were Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Reader’s Digest started condensing
books (often then-current best sellers)in 1950 as a way of making books more generally available to those who lived in rural areas without
access to libraries or the means to buy large quantities of books.. Four times a year, my father would receive a
book with four or more novels, condensed or abridged. As a young reader with neither guide nor
restrictions, I did not know that some sneered at condensed books. I read them, sampling many different authors,
some of whom became friends for life.
I don't
know the total number of books in my father's library. Fewer than one hundred survived the trip in
those two boxes and before I left home at 17, I had read nearly all of those
books.
A
life-long reading habit often starts with hearing books read aloud. Since I
have no memory of books read to me as a child, I can only estimate their number.
As a grandfather, I have created an Excel spreadsheet on which I try to keep
track of the number of books that our grandchildren have read or heard read. I am now behind and realize I can’t capture all the books that belong on the list. I can report, however, that with my oldest
grandchildren approaching eight years old, the list of books read now contains more than
400 books.
With the
help of family members and the web, I also created my own suggested reading
list, "1001 Books to read before you go to college." That To Be Read (TBR) list started by asking
my son and my daughter to list the most memorable books from their
childhood. My wife added her “must read” books, including some that I
had never read until I met her.
Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, Winnie
the Pooh, and the Wind in the Willows and anything written by Dr. Seuss were on
everyone’s TBR list. The TBR list has been a useful resource when
buying books for birthday or holiday presents.
My
original plan was to start a new list on each child’s sixth birthday:
books read on their own. Like creating
lists of words they know as infants, the task soon proved impossible. When they
were 18 months old, we made such word lists for our children and in turn our
children did the same for their children.
By 24 months, they all knew too many words to list. Readers read. Sam and Andy now read more than 4 books each
week. Their first grade reading log has daily entries for Monday-Thursday and
is handed in each Friday. Even if I were
there to copy that sheet each week, that would log only the books they choose
to list. I am sure that Dara reads at the same rate and Abby and Eden will soon
be there as well. I know that their pace will slow down as school demands more and their pleasure reading books become longer. Even so, I think it likely that by college each grandchild will
have read (or have read to them) more than 1,000 books.
My early
reading years were likely not as rich, though I was reading to myself before first
grade, which I entered when I was five.
I was known as a reader and a bookworm.
I was eight years old when we moved to Oregon. That summer I was given my own library card. Every Friday night was library night. My mother took us to the local library and we
were allowed to check out three books each.
Though the library imposed a fine of two cents per day for late returns,
in my early years that fine was rarely a problem since I would usually finish
my three books long before the next Friday.
In the
children's section, I had my own little nook.
Two series of books were kept in that reading nook. The first series I just called the
"Orange books." These were biographies of famous Americans and
descriptions of aspects of Americana-the Erie Canal, the Oregon Trail, the
California gold rush and of course stories about cowboys and Indians and the
settling of the American west. I read all the Orange books, sometimes checking
out the same book several times. The
other series was known as the "Landmark" books, because the publisher
imprint on the spine of each book was "Landmark." Starting in the fifth
grade, these became my favorite books.
Landmark books covered many topics, but I remember the biographies of
famous men and women, including Jane Hull of Hull House, Thomas Edison and many
others. Published in the 1950’s and 1960’s, there are more than 100 books in the series. I think that completing all books in these
two series that were available at my town library was the start of a lifelong
habit of "adopting" authors and then reading every book they had
written in English (or translated).
I became
special friends with the librarians. When I ran out of books in the children's
section I was personally escorted to the adult section to continue my
insatiable quest for books about cowboys and Indians. The adult section seemed large. Row upon row,
all organized by the Dewey decimal system, with a card catalog to locate
books by subject, author or title. Even
at our local library in Springfield, Oregon, I learned that I was unlikely to
read all the books that had been written.
When I
left home for Harvard, I knew that I was a reader. I thought that I was a fast reader and I
thought that I was well-read. Imagine my
surprise when I was tested and classified as a slow reader. Harvard suggested
strongly that I take a remedial reading course.
Since I was on scholarship, Harvard also offered to pay $20 of the $25
tuition for the reading class. I took
the course. There I found a totally
different way of reading; speed-reading for content; trying to wrest from the
writer the central meaning of his writing in the least amount of time. There I also learned what Harvard thought of
the Reader’s Digest. In my first week at college, my roommate had
snickered when I started a sentence, “I read in the Reader’s Digest that . . . .” In the reading course, one of the exercises
in speed reading was to take the test and answer the multiple-choice questions
without bothering to read the article.
The instructor selected an article from the Reader’s Digest, “The most unforgettable
character I ever met.” We were supplied only the title of the
article and the name of that character.
Then the class took the test, answering in unison the correct answers to
the multiple-choice questions. Though I
still had affection for the Reader’s Digest, it was no longer a
source reference for conversations.
I also
found out in those first few weeks that I was not well-read at least in
comparison to many of my class-mates who had gone to prep schools in the
east. I had read one Shakespeare play,
Julius Caesar; they had read Shakespeare for many years and could quote lengthy
passages. There was a body of classical
literature that seemingly all of them had read.
I was familiar with many of the names and titles, either from the game
of Authors or by some exposure at school. I realized very rapidly that I simply
had not read as many of the classics as my classmates. I also realized that it would be a challenge
to do my required reading for my courses and that I could not catch up overnight
on all the reading that I had missed.
And yet, it mattered.
One
friend shared a hobby with his father, an English professor. They read Finnegan’s Wake for fun, searching out the obscure literary clues that
littered the book. I had read only Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,
thought that Ulysses could be tackled
only by masochists, and could scarcely comprehend the depth of knowledge
required to read, understand, and enjoy Finnegan’s
Wake. Conversation in the dining hall included
literary allusions and references: said
of a California student, “acting like a Gatsby;” said of a professor, “full of sound and fury;” of the freshman year, “it
was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Some references I knew, others I didn’t, and some slipped by me without my being aware that a reference
had occurred. What to do?
I decided
on a plan of action. I knew I could not catch up overnight. I also believed that this deficiency was of
knowledge, not intelligence. I was
capable of reading and understanding any of these works. I committed to myself to read one book each
week, apart from my required class work.
Over time and with some disciplined selection, I would catch up. This reading would be for enjoyment and
comprehension, not speed-reading to wrest meaning from the text. I adopted the plan on my 18th
birthday, November 18, 1964. I was to
follow that plan for the next fifty years.
I did not restrict my reading to the classics or any particular
genre. Usually, I read one “serious” book for about each three lighter
ones – books to be read on a bus or
airplane, or on a beach.
When I
turned 30, I realized that the last hard science course I had taken was in high
school when I was 16 and the last science book I had read was Niko Tinbergen’s, The Herring Gull’s
World, which
I read in my one and only soft science course in college. Looking at my young children, I realized that
if I did nothing, I would be increasingly out of touch with their world. So I started to read science. Isaac Asimov was a great writer of science
fiction. He also wrote popular science essays. Groups of around 15 of his essays were then published
as books. His interests covered all of
science and so I was exposed to chemistry, biology, physics, astrophysics,
astronomy and cosmology as those topics had developed in the 1970s. I found the essays on physics and cosmology
to be particularly compelling. That led
to a long-term hobby of trying to understand and to keep current with
developments in these disciplines.
I love
book lists. High school English teachers started me with recommended summer
reading lists. Harvard sent a suggested
summer reading list before freshman year.
In college, I started my own TBR list, primarily of classics that my
friends and classmates considered to be basic.
At first, I would simply check off books on the TBR list as I read
them. Later, I started keeping lists of
all books that I had read in the course of a year. Theoretically, this was to help prevent me
from buying duplicates of the same book, first in hardback and then in
paperback some time later. Keeping the
book list never solved the duplicate acquisition problem, but it did become a
habit. In earlier years, I kept the list
on a yellow legal tablet. Later, I
started to keep the list on the computer.
In some years, I annotated the list with a little review— what the book was about; would I recommend it; what did I learn
from it. As I slowed down my work
pace, my reading pace picked up. In recent years, I average around one hundred
books each year. That pace is unlikely to change as long as I can see to read.
So to answer
my nephew’s question: 500 to 1,000
books before college. Fifty to 100 books
per years for 50 years = 2,500 to 5,000, so I have read 3,000 to 6,000 books to
date. At my current rate, perhaps 2,000 more
before I am dead or can no longer read.
So, in my lifetime, I will read 5,000 to 8,000 books.
