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Old 04-17-2011, 11:48 AM   #2
ficbot
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I read many of these authors in school and will not read them again. Once was enough They weren't bad, necessarily. They did need to be read one time. But I do not think I need to spend my reading time reading them again when there are so many other great books I haven't gotten to.

And I do not think 'being well-read' has to mean 'reading an arbitrary list of books someone else tells you to read.' I love Dickens, for instance. He writes of a time and place that is past, but his work was still enjoyable for me to read. I did not love George Eliot though, from this same time and place. Why? Who knows. So what is to be gained by forcing myself to read George Eliot, when I could be reading Dickens instead? Or some other author?

My brother is another example, a non-reader for many years. All of a sudden, he picked up 'Shogun' one day, loved it, and it changed his life. I read a memoir recently where someone else describes her teenage son having the same 'revelation' when he read Murakami. Do we say one is the better book and not the other? Should we not be reading Shogun because some arbitrary taste-maker has decided we should read Murakami instead? That is ridiculous to me.

Last edited by ficbot; 04-17-2011 at 02:58 PM.
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