Jeannie Marshall wrote an article for the National Post which reminded me of a poster I saw by accident that gave me fits when I was in my late teens.
It was on one of my very infrequent trips to visit my father in Texas. My father was involved in a number of groups, including one that was tackling illiteracy. In a spare bathroom in his house which wasn’t used much he had hung this poster which was supposed to be optimistic, but which filled me with dread. I don’t remember the exact text, but the poster showed hundreds of books piled on top of each other and had text to the effect that if parents made sure their kids started reading early, they could read hundreds of books in their lifetime (I’m sure there was some other message, but it is the number of books that stuck with me).
The poster horrified me because I quickly realized that even assuming I lived to be 100 and averaged a book a week, I’d get through less than 5,000 books. Of course, I read much faster than a book a week, but still, the total number of books I can possibly read is only an extremely tiny percentage of the number of worthwhile books that have been published.
That is part of the reason that I am such a fanatical reader. This drives many of the people who know me in real life nuts. Toward the end of Marshall’s piece, she writes,
The surprising thing about those afflicted with reading anxiety is that they also tend to go out and socialize. They do not fit the stereotype of the reclusive bookworm. … These readers said they would never dream of canceling a social engagement in order to read.
Slackers! Then again, I definitely fit the stereotype of the reclusive bookworm. I take books everywhere. I have read books in plenty of situations that I am certain were completely inappropriate — I once read an econometric study of slavery during a wedding rehearsal, and an analysis of Clinton’s foreign policy at a wedding reception.
Remember that Twilight Zone episode (“Time Enough At Last”) where the rest of the world is destroyed and Burgess Meredith is left with his books and all the time in the world to read them, until he breaks his glasses? My wife says that is so much like me, it is eerie.