Lists

Yeah, I write lists.  I started my list of Books Read when I was a senior in high school and now I'm somewhere between 1500 and 2000 books read since then.

Actually, when I mention this (not very often) to folks, many seem amazed.  Perhaps they don't read many or any books and would be embarrassed, or perhaps it never occurred to them that this records their scholastic, mental and intellectual ebbs and flows during their lives.  I mean, if you read Uncle Tom's Cabin in college for a course, it would remind you of the inclinations and persuasions of that professor, wouldn't it; and if you read Nietzsche for pleasure, that would indicate your mental or perceived intellectual state at that period in your life, because nobody would read Thus Spoke Zarathustra for pleasure, right, or don't you know even who wrote that?

Book Read number 1000 decades ago was Moby Dick I remember, a great American novel (a top five), although it stalled adding to my reading list for four months while I plowed through it (while working and raising children long before my family was utterly destroyed by American divorce wars . . . well, that's another Western civilization story), because that was a momentous number and I wanted it to be a momentous book.  I'll die soon enough and take my book list to St. Peter's gate, where it'll be my ticket of admittance showing a life well lived, or maybe it'll show a life squandered.

Mostly I read history, especially of WW2 because my dad fought in that war and he was the greatest man I ever knew, but I try to read literature at least once each year.  This year it was Animal Farm because some animals are more equal than others, like, you know, Republicans.  I read at least a book a month and my next post, I'll let you know what the best dozen books were and what I thought about them.