When I was in Dallas earlier this summer, I read this article in the local paper, The Dallas Morning News. I found it so interesting that I stole that section of the paper from my brother-in-law and brought it back with me. I have finally found it on the web, so I can insert it here in my book journal. It's the fascinating reading log of a guy who was sick and couldn't work, so he decided to just read. And keep track of what he had read. It's an extremely eclectic list of books, I have to say. And he begins with a former bosses (boss' ? how does one make that possessive?) strange speculation, similar to the Buddhist I referenced in an earlier entry, about the damage that books can do to the mind. He reckons his own mind is gone by now, in that case. But read on through the whole thing, past the list. Dan Barber comes to his own conclusions on the effects of reading.
When ill health left a book lover with time on his hands, he made literary lemonade
07:43 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 6, 2004
By DAN R. BARBER / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
He was something of a pocket Buddha, as I recall. Flat-footed, he stood just a couple inches above 5 feet. He had chubby cheeks, a potbelly and a rascal's smile, and his eyes twinkled with mischief when pleased.
I hadn't thought about him for some time, until one day last year when he – a former boss – abruptly came to mind. Something he said more than 20 years ago began to haunt me.
This outwardly jolly man, who once boasted that he was a millionaire, said books did strange things to a human brain. In the way a responsible parent would warn a wayward adolescent not to smoke, drink or take drugs, he cautioned that he thought it possible to read too much.
Books, he said, twisted a person.
Chronicle of addiction
My mind is gone for good now, I guess. Last year, I read 101 books. It's documented, too, my yearlong descent into literary dementia. Like Sir William Ewart Gladstone, a 19th-century English prime minister and avid reader, I kept a journal of every book I read; from The Orchid Thief , the year's first, to Cold Mountain, completed on a dark winter night with just two hours remaining in 2003. Why, some might reasonably ask, would anyone want to read so much? And how would they find the time?
For me, the answer is easy. Multiple sclerosis. I can't walk through a mall without sitting down, but I now have all the time in the world to read whatever I want, something of which I once only dreamed.
So last year, I decided to see how many books I could finish in 12 months.
I should say at the outset that my literary interests are all over the map. I am unfocused. From natural history to art history, fishing, hunting and biography, literary fiction to essays on book collecting, I am, I suppose, a peripatetic, Quixotic reader. I stagger a bit when I walk and my interests are here and there, too.
Unbounded pleasures
For example, after The Orchid Thief, an account of a flower felon's escapades, I read A Country Boy in Africa, a memoir of a professional hunter's life on the savanna. Ex-Libris, which is about book collecting and libraries, was next.
Originally, I thought I would finish one book a week. Because this seemed a daunting task, I would read two, sometimes three books at once while lounging in shorts and T-shirt. I finished A Garden of Demons (fantasy) and Exploring Lewis and Clark (historical essay) on the same day.
Not that I'm high-minded. Two days later I finished Rifles and Cartridges for Large Game, just in case I ever need to shoot an elephant in my pajamas. I have a confession. To ensure that I reached my goal, I began reading short books, novels with 200 pages or less, and coffee-table size histories with photographs, such as The Buffalo Hunters.
Sometimes I was diverted by an esoteric title, though. Color-blind as well as easily distracted, I finished Color: A Natural History of the Palette – an engaging book about the natural sources of color for paints and dyes.
What was, what is
I read At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman and Traplines , both about anglers' escapades. And because I can spend more time with a book than a fishing rod these days, I also read Sixpence House, a memoir of two bibliophiles' time in an English town filled with used books.
On and on I read. By the end of June, I had finished book 50. I reached that goal in less than six months; 100 books in a year seemed attainable. In mid-August, I finished The Lunar Men, an account of the friendship of several English inventors and booklovers, and A Good Life Wasted, another angler-author's tale. Both titles suggest my former boss might have had a point.
By Oct. 31, I had read more than 80 books, including So Many Books, So Little Time, by journalist Sara Nelson, who set out to read a book a week for a year. When I finished book 99, A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, I felt very impressed with myself. With time to spare, I walked the literary high road until I read that Gladstone, a prime minister of England in the 1800s, had read 250 books every year of his adult life.
Now THAT'S crazy.
Priority becomes passion
I don't really mean that, of course. Books were paramount to Sir William and if I may share his limelight, they mean volumes to me as well. Reading so many books, having the time and the desire, has sustained me when the only wandering I'm likely to do these days is through bookstores.
Just how significant books have become, for me at least, didn't become clear until I was about to complete my literary safari.
While on a weekend trip last fall, I bumped into my former boss's daughter and her family. We talked about the usual things after so much time. Where do you live now? What do you do?
How's your father?
With an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile and a quick glance to the other side of the room, she said he had died.
He lost his business and, in despair, had committed suicide.
And then I remembered what he had said about reading too many books. Could reading a book, one or 100, have restored his hope?Could reading a book have sustained him in frightening, uncertain times?
Who am I to say? Perhaps, but I can't honestly speak for him.
Of this I am sure: It IS possible to be too rich or too thin, despite what some people say.
But you can't read too many books.
Writer and bibliophile Dan R. Barber tends butterfly gardens and reads in Forney; today he is finishing his 40th book of 2004.
READING 101
The 101 books in the order read by Dan Barber in 2003:
The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean
A Country Boy in Africa, George Hoffman
Ex-Libris, Ross King
A Garden of Demons, Edward Hower
Exploring Lewis and Clark, Thomas P. Slaughter
Rifles and Cartridges for Large Game, Layne Simpson
The Buffalo Hunters, Charles M. Robinson III
Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay
The Passions of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Burstein
The Book of Illusions, Paul Auster
•
On Blondes, Joanna Pitman
Eyesores, Eric Shade
Rosemary and Bitter Oranges, Patrizia Chen
Danny Boy, Malachy McCourt
Colors of Africa, James Kilgo
The Afterword, Mike Bryan
At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman, John Gierach
Sixpence House, Paul Collins
When the Emperor Was Divine, Julie Otsuka
The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Paul Elie
•
Take Joy, Jane Yolen
Our Father Who Art in a Tree, Judy Pascoe
Rifles for Africa, Gregory Woods.
Used and Rare, Lawrence and Mary Goldstone
Best Friends, Thomas Berger
Good Faith, Jane Smiley
Life on Cripple Creek, Dean Kramer
The Bellstone, Michael N. Kalafatas
Sleep Toward Heaven, Amanda Eyre Ward
Hunger, Elise Blackwell
•
Promiscuous Unbound, Bex Brian
Ghost Rider, Neil Peart
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach
A Walk in Rome, City of the Soul, William Murray
The Fabulist, Stephen Glass
The Story of My Father, Sue Miller
Untangling My Chopsticks, Victoria Abbott Riccardi
How to Build a Tin Canoe, Robb White
Into Africa, Martin Dugard
Autobiography of a Geisha, Sayo Masuda
•
The Box Children, Sharon Wyse
The Great Wave, Christopher Benfey
The Wages of Genius, Gregory Mone
The Teammates, David Halberstam
Chasing Shakespeares, Sarah Smith
Feynman's Rainbow, Leonard Mlodinow
The Book of Dead Birds, Gayle Brandeis
Writers on Writing, Collected EssaysFrom The New York Times
The Commissariat of Enlightenment, Ken Kalfus
Traplines, John Rember
Creation, Katherine Govier
Walking a Literary Labyrinth, Nancy M. Malone
Our Own Devices, Edward Tenner
The Seashell on the Mountaintop, Alan Cutler
The Cruelest Miles, Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury
In the Shadow of Memory, Floyd Skloot
The Path, Chet Raymo
Reunion, Alan Lightman
The Gangster We Are All Looking For, le thi diem thuy
Come Closer, Sara Gran
Hell at the Breech, Tom Franklin
Gazelle, Rikki Ducornet
Liars and Saints, Maile Meloy
The Lunar Men, Jenny Uglow
A Good Life Wasted, Dave Ames
Born Twice, Giuseppe Pontiggia
After, Francine Prose
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon
Literary Occasions, V.S. Naipaul
Built for Speed, John A. Byers
Library, Matthew Battles
Swann's Way, Marcel Proust
Reading New York, John Tytell
Turning Bones, Lee Martin
On the Run, David DiBenedetto
An Open Book, Michael Dirda
So Many Books, So Little Time, Sara Nelson
Blindsided, Richard M. Cohen
Paradise, Larry McMurtry
Heart Shots, Mary Zeiss Stange
Elizabeth Costello, J.M Coetze
The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seierstad
Genesis, Jim Crace
Old School, Tobias Wolff
Siegfried, Harry Mulisch
A Gentle Madness, Nicholas A. Basbanes
City of Glass, Paul Auster
The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud
Ghosts, Paul Auster
Envy, Joseph Epstein
And Now You Can Go, Vendela Vida
Gluttony, Francine Prose
The Locked Room, Paul Auster
Shipwreck, Louis Begley
Orchard, Larry Watson
The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens, John Rechy
Cold Mountain: A Journey From Book to Film, introduction by Anthony Minghella
Timbuktu, Paul Auster
A Splendor of Letters, Nicholas A. Basbanes
The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzard
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
Online at:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/texasliving/stories/070304dnlivbooks_barber.48da7.html
6 comments:
That is one long list! Sad about the boss. :-) ---Robbie
The depth is impressive!
V
Thanks, honey, for reprinting the article in its entirety. Dan is my new inspiration. What an amazing bibliography. Makes be want to read those V.S. Naipul's and Francine Prose's that I've missed and those books about books that I've never read. Right now I'm listening to children's fantasy The Dark Is Rising for my homework. Quite British. I'm also reading a book told from the point of view of Meriweather Lewis' dog. He, the dog, named Seaman, was a great, solid black Newfoundland bought for $20 before the expedition. He was a great explorer himself, from all accounts. I'm tellin' ya: kids' books are pretty great too.
VERY interesting article.
It made me look around at myself and wonder, (actually not for the first time), if I have a slight reading addiction problem. Because I read at least a book every two days, sometimes every day...from my vantage point here in my computer chair, I have a bookshelves to my left, and to my right, I have books piled upon books on my computer desk, on the floor beside me, and in bags and boxes behind me. Can this type of reading have twisted me and I not even realize it? Is it excessive?
i would like to know what he meant about his 'yearlong descent into literary dementia'. Dementia in what way? Does he take comfort or inspiration from things he's read? Does he change real life situations in his head to make a proper ending? Does his worldview shift with everything he puts into his mind? It's clear that his experience wasn't a bad thing, I would like to know more about how it affected him.
I'd also like to know which of those books he'd recommend!
Woah, that is one wide and varied list!
And I completely agree -- it's impossible to read too many books.
What an interesting man. What a fascinating entry. I just wrote an entry about reading last week, after learning from a report of the National Endowment for the Arts that 90 million people didn't pick up a single book in 2002, the last year they've done the study.
Can one take one too many breaths? I don't think so, and neither can one read too many books.
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