620 Books

I'm an academic. I read for fun. Don't judge me.

So says my Facebook profile. At various points in my life, people have belittled me (with varying degrees of seriousness) for the fact that I read a lot. I don't really care anymore. I like to read, it is a stress reliever for me, and I would love to be able to call myself "well read" (although being well read is a full time job in and of itself).

So I was just looking at my refrigerator, and the green index card that's at the top of it caught my eye. It reads 620 books. The backstory is that nearly four years ago, I was having a hellish fall semester as a college sophomore. At fall break, I went home, and I was telling the story of all my assignments to a friend from church. This friend has a son who is a Ph.D student in history at Emory University, and at the time, his son was preparing for his Ph.D comps. My friend told me that his son had a list of 620 books that he had to know for his exams. So I went back to school, wrote "620 books" on a green index card, and posted it on my desk (where it remained for the next 2.5 years) as a reminder of how my workload could be worse.

So as I gazed upon this green index card this evening, I thought, "I haven't even read 620 books in my entire life." I know I've only read about 380 since I've been keeping a reading log (roughly 2000), not including required school reading.

Pope Benedict owns 20,000 books. I'm sure he's read most, if not all, of them.

I guess I have some work to do.