This is a blog about reading.
More specifically, it’s a blog about my attempt to read the entire list of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, based on the list created by James Mustich.
What are the rules?
The rules are simple: I’m going to read 1,000 books and blog about my experience. There’s no time limit, but at my current rate it’ll take me somewhere between 15 and 20 years.
How do you choose the order in which you read the books?
Lots of times I pick them completely at random. Other times, I try to balance it out by reading something heavy followed by something light, non-fiction followed by fiction, old followed by new, etc. Other times, though, I just pick things that I happen to find at bookstores or at the library.
In other words, there’s no particular order.
Why would anyone do this?
I’ve always been an avid reader. Since high school, I have been the kind of person who carries a book everywhere he goes, the kind of person who goes to bookstores to get day-of releases from authors he likes, the kind of person who regularly checks eBay for first editions of Gene Wolfe novels.
A few years ago, though, I was starting to feel a little bogged down by the books I was reading. My tastes are varied, but I definitely lean towards science fiction and fantasy, and a lot of what was popular in those genres seemed to be becoming more…entrenched. Authors were digging into one particular mode of writing and rinse/repeating their way to best-seller lists. Books were sticking with a set of rules that would appeal to everybody and challenge nobody — building a whole neighborhood of houses that were a dazzling array of colors, but all essentially built on an identical foundation.
Or, that’s how it felt. Maybe I wasn’t branching out when it came to my reading habits. Maybe I was just bored.
I decided that I needed some outside advice when it came to picking the books I would read. As I went around the internet looking for suggestions, I came across all kinds of list for all sorts of genres — Top 50 Literary Classics, Top 100 Must-Read Mysteries, etc. — but in the end I found 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich and I figured that was just what I was looking for.
All of This is Arbitrary!
Yes, it is. Picking a list of books of any size is going to be problematic for several reasons, but mostly because it’s frankly impossible to make a DEFINITIVE list of books you ought to read. How do you ascribe value to a book? Do you consider its influence, its uniqueness, its longevity? Should you value books from the western canon more highly than, say, Asian or African works? Does Shakespeare count, even though he technically wrote “plays” and this list is about “books?” What about books of poetry? Should the list include genre fiction, and, if so, how much weight should be given to each genre?
These are all perfectly valid questions and I don’t have an answer to any of them.
The ambiguity of it is the reason I decided on Mustich’s list: It’s the most inclusive list I’ve found by nature of its being the longest. There’s a little bit of everything, so how can you go wrong?
What Sorts of Books are On the List?
You can check it out here.
If there are any books on the list (or off of it, for that matter) that you think I should read, feel free to drop me a comment. I’d say I’ve never heard of about 50% of the books on that list, so I don’t know which ones are going to be duds and which ones zingers.
I only hope there are more of the latter.