The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

That’s exactly what happens in a danish gymnasium, where the content is meant to enlighten as much as educate, and the difference between choosing the “regular” humanism route takes you so much further than one of the technical routes.

I know because I took the technical route and I married into a family who took the humanities. I’ve spent years catching up on philosophy, art, history, psychology and culturally important fiction, and I’m still not really part of the cultivated conversation when they really go at it.

I don’t mind, they can’t talk math or engineering or even business management, but they’re all very similar because they followed a list.

I’ve often wondered why there aren’t any easily available lists on the internet, because it’s really just the works you’d go through in your four-five year path, that’s shared among all humanities.

Obviously there is a difference between reading platon on your own and reading it in a curated environment where you can discuss its meaning with your teacher and your peers, but don’t tell me those teachers couldn’t compile you a list.

I think the real issue is that we killed blogs. A route to cultivation isn’t going to pop-up in a Facebook discussion, and if it is, then it won’t be searchable. And teachers or members of the humanities in general, seem to be much less likely to have an online jourbal which covers their professional life than people in tech. I read a news paper with a books section, and you’ll see this exact issue covered often in regards to new works, but those articles are only available on print or in an online archive you have to pay to access or even search in.

So the lists are absolutely there, we just can’t access them outside of our educational system or closed discussions had by the people who wouldn’t need the list.

Until that I can recommend Bill Gates lists, it’s a really great resource for modern international works. Some of the recommendations in gates notes are very humanitarian, but others, like Sapiens, have made it into the book shelf of most cultivated people I know and I only read it because it was recommended in gates notes.

In any case, I didn't get the impression he was restricting himself. He describes going into book shops picking up any book he happened to light upon. My feeling was that he had decided not to beat himself up if these books did not encompass everything in the entire world. After all, isn't that the central premise - life is short?

Your alternative subtitle is unnecessarily mean-spirited. I don't believe he was claiming to be in any way remarkable, in the end he was simply describing how he loves books.