Sunday, July 6, 2008

What is this about?

It's pretty simple, really. I read. A lot. Since I'm not independently wealthy, and am, in fact, pretty cheap, I use the library all the time. I was staring at my stack of library books, thinking about what to read next, and I idly noticed the numbers at the base of the spine. Those are, for the uninitiated, the book's Dewey Decimal number, which tells the library where to shelve it. I had books from all over the library, and I thought, "I wonder how long it would take to read all of them?"

Since I'm not immortal, nor am I the guy from the Twilight Zone episode, I did have to scale it down somewhat. My goal is to read one book from every major number in the Dewey Decimal System. There are 1000 subcategories, although a number are not in use.

Why? Um. Yeah. I don't really have a good reason. Some people play golf. I read. Some slightly better reasons:
  1. somebody already beat me to reading the encyclopedia.
  2. I read a lot of non-fiction anyway, so why not try to keep a list, and try to make sure I cover everything?
  3. I'm kinda curious what esoteric knowledge lingers in the dark corners of the library.
  4. because I'd like to draw some attention to just how much amazing knowledge is piled up in even your tiny local library. They have everything mankind has produced in its 6,000 years. With all that knowledge, we've accomplished some pretty amazing things. You wouldn't be on the internet wasting your time reading this blog if it wasn't for some dude in Persia discovering algebra.
  5. because I'm a big know it all, and if I finish this I can move up to a huge one.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh BS. I know more than you and you know it. Or not. Anyways, did you know Denise and I are about to have #2? Child that is. And we got in a car wreck and the #$%&@!(&*$! didn't have insurance... Oh well.... Good luck with your reading. I, as a slow reader, will only be able to keep 1/4 time, so there you go.

The Reader said...

I did already know that. Bet I'm done with my project before you're done with yours. ;)