When I was young, my father used to chastize me for not looking up from my book while crossing the street. Calling me a “bookworm” was an apt metaphor: when I picked up a book, I crawled inside it and very rarely broke free to see the light of day until I was done.
These days, I don’t read as many books as I did back then — partly because of the fact that I’m a big magazine and periodical reader now. I certainly don’t read as much fiction, as my literary diet now consists of almost solely non-fiction works.
So when Jason Kottke posted a link to this list of 1001 fiction books everyone must read before they die, I was a bit nervous to take a poll of how many on that list I had already consumed.
I’ve only read about 35 of those…I’d have a lot of reading to do.