Thursday, October 29, 2009

Our species has produced too many good books

I was thinking about my long-term reading list, and whether or not I'm ever going to get through most of the books I want to read.

Just from my Amazon shopping list:

Politics of Experience
Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood)
Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan
Five Seasons of Angel: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Vampire (Smart Pop series)
Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series)
A Mathematician's Apology (Canto)
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Outliers: The Story of Success
Civilization and Its Discontents
Capital : A Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics) (Volume 2)
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Harry Potter Paperback Boxed Set (Books 1-7)
Starman Jones


Which doesn't include some graphic novels. 27 books plus the graphic novels, plus Capital Volume 3, and I'll read Breaking Dawn when the paperback edition comes out - at the latest. Just not a realistic expectation of my time? Since the beginning of this year I've read:

New Moon - Stephenie Meyer
Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer
The Door into Summer - Robert Heinlein
First part of Capital Volume 1, currently working on it - Karl Marx
Terror Dream - Susan Faludi
Volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 of Angel: After the Fall.
Most of Black Holes and Time Warps

Add the fact in my library I have most of an Einstein biography to go through, half or more of Steven Pinker's book The Stuff of Thought, the second half of Patrick Buchanan's book, I think "State of Emergency", well, I may have unrealistic expectations of my time :P

In the near future, I would like to finish:
Capital Volume 1
Freedom Evolves, Daniel Dennett
Harry Potter
Black Holes and Time Warps
What's unfinished in my library

It's kind of a bit sad to think that I'll never get through most of the good stuff. I have not even thought about other languages. A bit of a shock for someone who had no shortage of intellectual ambitions and pretensions growing up, this is somewhat sad :-)

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