Wondering About CostCo And Other Things

I was hanging out at CostCo a few days ago waiting for the food samples to be set up. I always check on the available books because I just hate to buy something at B & N or Borders, even with their discounts etc, and then find it a lot cheaper at CostCo or Amazon. Which reminds me, I'm not sure the retail book stores can stay in business, given the aggressive pricing of Amazon.

Anyway, I couldn't resist artfully re-arranging some of the books in this series. I see that there is a bidding war on between authors trying to persuade people to see certain movies, or drink certain cocktails, or read certain books. It used to be "1000 Places To See Before You Die." I'm very glad to see the more reasonable number is now 500. When I checked out the cocktails and movies I had never heard of most of these, so I turned to the book recommendations. Same story, only recognizing the titles of about 10%. This was very discouraging though I quickly came up with the idea of first putting the blame on our schools and then later, of course, preparing for medical school, then attending medical school and after that learning how to actually be a doctor, all of which took up a huge amount of time. In my case, all of the 60s, so I gave up long ago trying figure out how to do well on Jeopardy. I wonder, is there any chance that someone, say a publisher, is trying to push the losers still on his shelves? Hmm.

I came across an interesting blog a few weeks ago. It's called 3000 books. It's written by a young Australian who reckons she will live, on average, around 83 years , so she has about 60 years to go, and at around 1 book/week she will get through about 3000 books before she cashes in her chips. Her blog is about her reading adventures. I had never thought to add things up in this way before. Until I actually did the math, 3000 seemed way too small a number. Then I did the math for my situation (83-68=15; 15x52=780). Hmm. That sounds like a doable number, especially when I remembered that I have been alternating a new book or one that I hadn't read earlier with a books that I had read before and judged worthy to re-read. And we all will have some objective data about my declining mental faculties.

This last criterion has caused me more than a little grief. Fortunately, owing to the small amount of time available and a certain amount of uncertainty even about that, if the new or the re-read doesn't grab me in the first few pages I give it up and go on to the next one, or give some thought to listening to it on tape while driving, usually on long trips. This last tactic has resulted in several of the Winnie the Pooh books and the Odyssey actually being enjoyed, though I haven't got through the Iliad yet. I think I shall keep track of those I actually read at least most of the way through and perhaps even those I have rejected for whatever reasons.

So thank you very much, 23 year old Australian female. I hope I learn your name one of these days.