It gives me very great pleasure to announce that late last night (that is to say, early this morning) I finished reading my 1000th book since I began tracking my reading, way back in 2015.
My wife actually gave me as a birthday gift ten years ago the book database software (along with a barcode scanner) that I use, and she has always been happy to have found such a perfect gift for my continued enjoyment. As stated above, I only began tracking my reading through the database in 2015, and so it’s taken slightly over eight years to read these thousand books.
Now, when I say that I’ve read a thousand books … well, of course I’ve read many more. But these are just the ones for which I can affirm positively that, yep, I read that sucker, read it from cover to cover. I have many books in my collection which I know that I’ve read—that Frances Yates book on memory, or all those PKD short story collections—but which I have not ‘officially’ read since beginning this silly project. Also, as long-time readers of this blog might know (which population approaches zero if we discount myself), I resolved long ago not to include in this ‘official’ book count any comic books or graphic novels, fearing that they might stretch the curve in weird directions. However, since I never have decided just what to do with children’s books or such works as Edward Gorey or those Far Side collections, perhaps my concerns were misplaced or just plain wrong. But that’s the way it is. If we include those discounted comic works, my total runs up to 1131, but who’s counting?
My 1000th book was a single-volume edition of Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, which really is the only way to read the book, having at hand all of the appendices and maps and the index. After all, as everyone knows, J. R. R. Tolkien’s great ‘trilogy’ is really no trilogy at all, but simply a very long book divided into three parts for ease of reading. (And that’s the counterargument to my assertion just above; having the whole work in a single tome does tend to press down upon the chest when reading in bed, which is where most of my reading of this epic was done.) And I confess that I manipulated my reading to enable this fantasy masterwork to be book #1000; it’s not hard to read it fast or slow as one desires. But we should never underestimate Tolkien’s achievement, and it is salutary to compare and contrast the original with the films which threaten to overtake the written fiction in our collective memory. (I do not speak of the films purportedly made of The Hobbit, save to mention that I started this Tolkien kick about ninety books ago just to remind myself of how wonderful that endearing work of pastoral fiction was, and how utterly Peter Jackson missed its point.) But, though I found myself time and again rediscovering the differences, significant or minor, between the book and the films, the biggest revelation (‘re-revelation’?) was the sheer power of Tolkien’s prose. I had recently read (and finally completed) The Silmarillion [Book #966] and, truth be told, found some of that background book ponderous and, dare I say it, dull. But in The Lord Of The Rings, the kindly looking Oxford professor scales once more and surpasses the heights he reached in The Hobbit. Many other words, much better than any I might offer, have been written on Tolkien’s magnum opus, so I will merely advise you to turn once again to the scene at Orthanc when Saruman makes his last stand against the assembled forces of good. The delicate handling of dialogue there, as the quondam White Wizard attempts once more to cast his spell upon the host below him, the nuanced words and the sheer skill with which Tolkien gives letter perfect language to Saruman shows a writer at the top of his game, a man who has the ability to summon the discourse of silky evil, of cultured pleading, of imperious mastery, and then shows us the rough speech of Gandalf dispersing the miasma of doubt engendered by such language. True, nobody ever speaks like that—at least not in these latter days of the world—, but nobody spoke as Philip K. Dick wrote dialogue either, which makes neither author’s works any less compelling and truthsome.
Well, I’ve gone on at greater length than is my wont when giving you these summary announcements of my putative reading progress. But I should get back to the parts where I assure you that I’ll write up the data for this last set of books, or at least promise you a complete listing of the books read. In addition to those not-quite-made promises, I will mention that in this last ‘century’ of books, I resolved not to read any mysteries (save for on collection of the Continental Op stories that I was in the middle of when I finished Book #900), so I’m curious to see what difference that made to my reading patterns. I had found that nearly half the books I was reading were mysteries—mostly because I need some light reading to peruse while taking my lunch break at work, and those fit the bill. But while I did read a good bit of science fiction and fantasy (about 20% of the last hundred books), there doesn’t seem to be any other genre which had any such preponderance in the last tranche of reading.
My reading pace was much faster than the hundred books before, as I took only 167 days to read this century of books, as opposed to 258 days for Books # 801 – 900. This is because—despite a few massive tomes such as The Lord Of The Rings—the average book length was down significantly. (In other words, I read a bunch of shorter books.) I really should do a full analysis of both this last set of a hundred books as well as the whole set of one thousand … but whether I do or not only time will tell. (I’ve learned not to make rash (or any) promises.) I do promise, however, to (eventually) get around to giving you a full listing of the last set of books read. So you can’t ask for fairer than that, can you?
With the thousand books per eight years pace (very roughly), I now can contemplate reading every book I own … assuming I live to be 140 years old! … and that I cease acquiring more books. Neither of which is going to happen.
1 Book per 1.67 Days
Hoping to hit you soon with some real data, some real book lists….