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Well, Read

Our blog titles don't let us italicize, but I meant to write: "Well, Read." As in sorta-kinda-maybe.

You're a daisy if you've ever make it all the way through Moby Dick. How about Middlemarch? (OK, I managed that one. Ditto Infinite Jest. Sue me, I was bored, it was cold outside.)

Lennard Davis on the virtues of not reading. I only got halfway through this essay, and that's a fact:

[L]et's remember that even one of the greatest readers of literature, Samuel Johnson, admitted that "Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is." In fact, Johnson seemed to have made quite a career of not reading. He once lamented to his friend Mrs. Thrale, "Alas, Madam! How few books are there of which one can ever possibly arrive at the last page." And reacting to advice that once started, a book should be read all the way through, he opined, "A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?"

See also: "Area Man Well-Versed In First Thirds Of Great Literature."

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