On Saturday afternoon, the Little Mister and I found ourselves in a Borders, where I was intrigued to see this interesting cover, 501 Must-Read Books, in with the cheapie remainder books up near the registers. 544 pages of reviews and recommendations. A bargain at only $9.99. But there’s a catch. Apparently, if you’re going to devote your time to being well-read and seeking out the most important books, you need to steer clear of poetry. It’s not worth your time. According to this reference, there are 8 types of books you should read: Children’s fiction, Classic fiction, History, Memoirs, Modern fiction, Science fiction, Thrillers, and Travel. That’s it.
Or maybe after making room for the most important science fiction, thrillers, and travel books, there was no room for The Canterbury Tales, the Sonnets of Shakespeare, or Leaves of Grass. (Which is not to say that there aren’t very worthy thrillers or travel books, but, I mean, c’mon!)
I’m at least relieved to realize that this book doesn’t have a very wide reach. Other than the Borders remainder bin, I could only find it available online at this one Finish website (beware the link, it crashed my Firefox). As far as I can tell, you can’t even get it from Amazon. Now, I don’t normally revel in any book having a limited circulation. But in this case, I think it serves them right. No poetry!?! What were they thinking?
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