A Novel Question

Last night my husband and I were discussing how many books we have read in our lives and it was a somewhat tricky question. This was due to watching ‘The Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle’ where he explained that the English Polymath Thomas Young read all of the books published in his lifetime. His lifetime was from 1773–1829 and while I am not sure how many books were published during that time, it’s a fair assumption that so many books have been published in my lifetime that the chances of me reading all of them is ridiculously slim. Already feeling slightly depressed at this prospect I attempted to look up how many books have been published between 1977 and 2011 and even the internet could not seem to answer my question, giving me a series of results telling me how many Stephen King books have been published and various other authors but no concrete number of the books published in my lifetime. I felt cheered slightly by the prospect that, in not even attempting to read all the books in my lifetime, there are certain books I will never have to struggle through. When I say struggle I don’t mean due to my reading ability, I just mean the books that I haven’t been able to truly appreciate in my life and would therefore never want to have to read them.

A controversial choice in the ‘books I just couldn’t get through’ seems to be Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I know, I know, you may say “But it’s a classic” and I’m sure it is but I couldn’t make it past about three chapters. I have a sort of three chapter guideline with novels – grip me, excite me, interest me, draw me in within three chapters and I am hooked. If I am not interested in the book after three chapters I try a little longer but I invariably find that I don’t enjoy the rest of the book. It may seem a little restrictive but I do find that a book that grips me within three chapters generally will keep me reading long after I am supposed to be in bed, meet someone, get off the bus etc. This doesn’t apply to every book as some books have very short chapters and I do relax my guideline for this. This may seem a little harsh but I have read too many books where I reached the end and felt that I had wasted three or four hours of my life that I will never get back and so, with the vast amount of books that I want to read, I need to whittle down the list where possible. Anyway, back to Catch 22 – I tried to read it, I read and read and tried hard to concentrate but I just found myself drifting mentally and eventually I put it down. Later I started again, determined to get through it but again I just couldn’t build up the impetus to get through it. Don’t worry; many people have admonished me for not giving it a chance but to no avail. Not everybody enjoys everything and I just couldn’t read the whole book. I’m not insulting it, in fact it could be viewed as a book that was too good for me and that I was the one worse off for not having read it to completion.

I went through a phase several years ago where I decided to read as many of the classic books as I could as there were lots of classic literature to which I had just never gotten around. I read Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm by George Orwell, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier among others. I read the philosophies of Descartes and Nietzsche, I read Jean Paul Sartre, I read Freud and Jung all topped off with a helping of A Brief History of Time (more about this later) by Stephen Hawking. Now don’t get me wrong, I read some good books, I read some turgid books and while I think it was something that I originally wanted to do – like a child having eaten a whole birthday cake alone, I felt bloated, consumed, and sick of reading. Perhaps not so oddly, after this period of nonstop obsession reading, the idea of even a thin book, even a wafer thin mint of a book, had me metaphorically pushing away my plate and holding my hand to my mouth – no more, at least for a while.

After a period of rest I started to read Will Self books which in retrospect were possibly a mistake at the time. In my humble opinion dear reader, Will Self is an amazing author but I found that I regularly needed a dictionary by my side; the words he used were almost musical in content, I actually found myself writing notes while reading his books. Like an inexperienced reader he seemed to take my hand and led me into a world of language as well as entertaining me, making me look into myself and around me at the world. Anyway, I read one particular book by Will Self where I spent most of the book finding that I identified, at least in part, with the main character only to find out his true nature at the end and I didn’t like his true nature at all. Hopefully the lack of detail doesn’t spoil the book for anyone who chooses to read it but the book really made me think. As I hadn’t been diagnosed with OCD at this time I had no one to really discuss my thoughts and worries with and I worried that I was like the character. Years later I can look back at this and have even read the book again without fear and it was truly thought provoking. I also read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and Dorian by Will Self around the same time and both books were amazing.

As is my obsession, once I start doing something I tend to find that I need to consume everything concerned with it. I started reading Robert Rankin books as recommended by a good friend of mine and before I knew it I had read pretty much every book he had written, finding me bereft waiting for the next. I was the same with Terry Pratchett books too at one time. I read books from many genres; I read chick lit, fantasy, crime, science fiction. I read the Dan Brown books, enjoyed the Harry Potter books from J.K. Rowling (despite the books being for kids I have scarcely met an adult who hasn’t read them). Ultimately I realised that, I just can’t read everything I want to, it’s just too much.

When I was a child I was a voracious reader, there was barely a time when I didn’t have at least one book on the go. I read in bed, I read on the loo, I read in the bath (That’s how Halloween got soaked and the pages were stiff and yellow :( ), I read in the garden (It’s scary reading Silence of The Lambs by Thomas Harris when birds keep squawking unexpectedly!). I read most of the books in the kids section in our local library and got books for Christmas and birthdays. I truly loved reading.

In my teenage years I read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, I then read it again...and again...and again. I read that book in total five times and I still can’t get my head around some of the concepts. I was determined not to let that book beat me, it wasn’t the reading of it that was causing me issue, it was understanding it. I think I pretty much decided there and then that I was never to be a scientist or a mathematician – although to be fair my degree is a Bachelor of Science so strictly speaking I am a scientist...of sorts :)

The thing that often put me off reading as a teenager was being required to read specific books at secondary school, I don’t remember us getting much of a choice as to whether or not we read Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Spoiler alert for those who haven’t read it and want to, I’m about to reveal something concerning one of the characters so if you don’t want to know, skip to the next paragraph. I was determined not to read it, in my teenage rebellion, as I didn’t want to be forced to read a book that I didn’t think I would enjoy. I know, I know but come on! I was a teenager, that’s how we roll. Anyway, we were supposed to read a chapter every week or some such thing and then during one of the English literature lessons the teacher said “What was the significance of the events surrounding Piggy’s death?” (you were warned) and my first thought was ‘Piggy died?!?! I didn’t know that!’ and I had a pretty hard lesson trying to get out of that question. I did read it after all and, sadly as I suspected, I didn’t enjoy it – whether it was the being forced to read it for my own educational sake or the fact that it was about a group of boys running amok on an island challenging the concepts of human nature, it just didn’t spark anything inside me. The thing is, that if I say today that I didn’t enjoy the book, people seem to get cross with me telling me that it is a classic and that I just didn’t appreciate it; this may be the case but I just didn’t enjoy it either way and as everyone am entitled to my opinion.

When I was a child I read a book about a king who was terrified of being poisoned and so requested that he was given a goblet made from a unicorn’s horn. It was a beautiful book with intricate illustrations but to this day I haven’t been able to find out what it was called and as I was a child I can’t remember what it was called so I have never been able to view it again which is a real shame. I remember reading The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain both by Gillian Cross as a child and for a while was convinced that people were trying to hypnotise me :)

In these modern times I have both an eBook reader and a Kindle as, due to my OCD, I physically can’t touch books anymore due to my mysophobia (fear of contamination and germs) but I do miss the feel, the smell of a book. My husband steadfastly refuses to read electronic books, as if being disloyal to the beauty of a book. I’ve suggested buying eBooks for him several times only to have him shudder and say “I’d rather have a real book”, apparently he agrees with Douglas Adams in that any technology invented after you are 35 is unnatural – despite the fact that he is not 35 yet, this doesn’t seem to waver him from this opinion. I have only just managed to get him onto a social networking site. Considering he is in I.T. he has some very conflicting opinions!

We had a discussion last night about whether eBooks will wipe out physical books eventually and whether it is ironic that companies online set up to sell books may or may not lead to the death of the physical book by selling eBooks too. I hope not. There is something so exquisite about books and book stores; walking into a bookstore is such an experience – so much knowledge burgeoning out to meet you and it can be yours if you choose – I don’t get the same feeling shopping online for eBooks. Thumbing the book spines, smoothly gliding a book from its shelf and leisurely reading the synopsis on the back – it’s a tactile, tangible, palpable experience which cannot be elicited by browsing eBooks. It may be more environmentally friendly to have an eBook reader seeing as there is no real paper involved, eBooks are available wherever you are (especially on the Kindle), you can carry thousands of tomes around with you and you’re not likely to get a paper cut from an eBook reader but somehow without a physical book, it just isn’t as ‘real’.

All that being said; I do love my eBooks readers as they allow this OCD and agoraphobic to read whatever I want, whenever I want and for that I am enormously grateful.

So, back to the question of how many books I have read in my life? Who knows, it could be hundreds, it could be thousands. There are lots of people who will have read more than me and lots who have read less. It should really be quality over quantity when it comes to books and I have had a mix of the two. What is true is that I hope there’ll be lots more books I’ll read in my lifetime.

I might even give A Brief History of Time another read :)