Why I am reading what I am reading

I have had a few questions over the past couple months about why I am fighting my way through some of the books I am reading - specifically Kafka. In a way it's an easy answer, because they are there, but it's actually a little more complex.

I started out on this project because I found two lists on, I think, Amazon.com. The first was the 25 books every Freshman must read, the second was the top 20 geek novels of all time. I consider myself fairly well read, but I realized I had only read about half of each list, so on a whim I decided I would read all the remaining books on each list. Well that has lead off on it's own little reading adventure.

As I started I ended up reading two Neal Stephenson novels, "The Diamond Age" and "Snow Crash" which lead to "Cryptonomicon", which lead to "Quicksilver", which lead to "The Confusion" which lead to "Candide" along the line that also got me going on "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and "The Wealth of Nations", Newton's "Principia Mathematica" is also going to be on there somewhere. This has also lead to a lot of reading of Wikipedia article about Isaac Newton and other figures, and has caused me to purchase The Great Books of the Western World series on e-bay.

In a way this is kind of funny because last year I read "I am Charlotte Simmons" and she was attending her university looking for "the life of the mind", and many of the same books I am reading now are those that she would be reading in her pursuit. The difference is I found a list on Amazon, I didn't have to pay $40,000 a year to go to Harvard or Yale. Actually that's not fair if either of those two schools (or Princeton or Stanford or UCLA etc. etc.) were to offer me a scholarship I would take it. Hint Hint.

While I am on the track of wishful thinking I am still waiting for marriage proposals from:

Pamela Anderson, Katherine Bell, Traci Lords, Juliet Huddy, Angie Harmon, Elizabeth Rohm, Jill Hennessy, Grace Park, Charlize Theron, Sabine Ehrenfeld.

books, education, humor, wishful thinking