About the Quality and Quantity of reading

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Student in the US, I heard today, learn English, or literature, by reading books, intensely. Almost several days a book, on assignment. If one reads one book every week, he will have 52 books read in a year. Be these all worthy books, how much will one grow after all that. At the speed I am proceeding now, I wouldn’t have read more than 10 in a year.

Here is the constraints I am meeting now concerning the reading issue: all that I want to read, or worthy books for me, usually original English works and rare editions, are not available in the library or book store; all the books available in the library and book store are as a whole a bad, bad collection, which not only can’t meet my needs, but also wastes my time when I was sifting though a whole lot of trash and in a worse case, picking up an extremely unworthy or toxic one. But another question rises as I wish that I can finish reading one book each week: I cannot reap much if I read a book with the strongest drive of finishing it in a week and dreaming for the moment when I finished the 52 books, conceiving the image of myself being automatically learned after the simple accumulation of books. With that in mind, inefficiency and a waste of time always follows. It was easy to be absent minded and let the effect take care of itself, but it will not.

Here is a contradiction: if I set a quota for my time, I will rush things up with my mind absent most of the time in whatever I do; but when I don’t, I will take my time wondering about,really forgetting the word URGENT.