Life is short and filled with what one could only describe as: A Series of Unfortunate Events. That’s why it’s always a comfort to settle down and forget all your troubles and the troubles of the world by reading a good book.
After doing a little research there are – based on estimates by Google Books – roughly 60 to 70 million books written in English available to readers.
That’s a lot of books. And millions more are being added every year.
If you were to read one book every week for 52 weeks a year it would take you approximately 1.25 million years to read all of those books.
Chances are you won’t live for 1.25 million years.
Chances are you will live – by current estimates – if you are a Canadian to 83.11 years of age. The average lifespan of an American in comparison is approximately 77.5 years of age. That means Canadians can read 292 more books in a lifetime based on reading one book a week for an additional 5.61 years. This alone is a good reason for maintaining Canadian Sovereignty.
A Canadian in their lifetime has the potential of reading 4,322 books if they read one book a week for their entire life. Given that life is so short and the number of books available so vast my question is why would you read a book you didn’t like?
Now, that’s excluding people who read books for a living. You know – critics.
But for the casual reader – the person who enjoys reading – books are read for enjoyment. At least that’s why I read a book. I read a book because it captures some aspect of life that makes me laugh or intrigues me or is a contemplation about the human condition. And yet I often read and see in reviews on Goodreads that people have absolutely hated the book they were reading.
In fact, they found it torture. And often they rage at the author. They often question how anyone could enjoy the book they hated so much.
And I’m left perplexed. No one is forcing them to read that book. No one cares if they read that book. If they don’t like that book, why did they keep reading it?
My suggestion is, when you find yourself reading a book and feel yourself being tortured – stop reading that book and instead find something else to read. In fact, I would suggest Lemony Snicket’s delightful series – A Series of Unfortunate Events. These books ignited a love of reading in my son when he was young, and now I’m reading the entire series, and loving it. I don’t hate it. If I hated it, I would find something else to read.
Of course, there are people who I have no doubt hate A Series of Unfortunate Events. I would hope that if they do, they do not torture themselves by reading all 13 books in the series and then writing reviews about how much they hate the books and how much they hate the entire series and how much they despise the author and wish instead of being a writer he’d been a dentist or a barista. That’s harsh. I think instead they should seek out a different book and a different series for their reading pleasure. Here are a few of my suggestions from my list of personal favourites:
- The Holy Man by Susan Trott
- All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg
- The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro Kazuo
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
- A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
- The Shining by Stepen King
- Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
- True Grit by Charles Portis
- Revenge of the Vinyl Café by Stuart McLean
- 1984 by George Orwell
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Kitchen Confidential: Adventures on the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Wingfield’s World by Dan Needles
- Jade City by Fonda Lee
- This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The World According to Garp by John Irving
- Marathon Man by William Goldman
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
And of course there are millions more for you to choose from. So, please don’t torture yourselves. Life is too short to read books you don’t like. Read what you want. Read for fun. Read to learn. Read for enjoyment. And I suppose that means if you really do enjoy torturing yourself – which some of you apparently do – then go ahead…read for the joy of telling everyone how much you hated what you read.
And so, with that in mind and a new year of reading ahead of us, I say happy reading to all and to all a good night.
