How many books will you read in your lifetime? is the title of an article by Mark Mason. He thinks he can’t read more than 800 books in his lifetime. If he could only learn speed reading then that would change. But more important question is posted on the comments part: “it doesn’t matter so much how many books you read, but what those books gave you”. We all ultimately want wisdom, not more knowledge. There is no shortage of knowledge, what’s missing is wisdom and overviews. Famously Lao Tsu said , “To become more knowledgable, each day learn one new thing. To become wise, each day unlearn one thing.” And remember to be aware of homo unius libri (Latin, meaning “man of one book”). David Beckham once claimed to have read only one book, on an England trip to Moldova but couldn’t remember the title. He was in his early twenties then. Read in full the article “How many books will you read in your lifetime?” For the record I’ve probably read about five thousands books so far and I intend to read thousands and thousands more (especially now when ebooks are very easy to carry around in my iPhone). But there are probably only a few hundreds of books that made a huge difference on my life and that I will treasure forever. The shortcut to wisdom and quickly accessible knowledge are of course summaries. Read more about the power of summaries.
