Let’s play connect the dots:
- Dot one: Every year around this time we are flooded with “top ten” lists.
- Dot two: As an English professor, I am often asked: what are your favorite books?
- Dot three: I’m nearing my mid-forties.
My reading suggestions might hold some weight; as I tell my students, my title provides a built-in Ethos. So maybe I ought to adopt my nasally academic voice and produce a list of books you all “should” read to make you better and smarter people.
Fifteen years ago, while still living in the bubble that was grad-school, I might have done just that. But there is that third dot.
Here is what happens when I connect all three dots: My favorite books are whatever I’m reading now – but I refuse to put them in order or name them. Moreover, there is not one “type” of book more worth reading than another. What is important is that I continue to read.
More succinctly: Unless you are my student – most of whom I like to make read until they cry uncle – I will not tell you what to read. It took me forty years to build a base with the help of countless others: Now, what I read is an intensely personal decision.
In fact, don’t buy me a book. I probably won’t read it. It is one part of my life where I now have complete control – I’ve earned it.
If you are still assembling that base, enjoy the building process, and know that I and many others hand out syllabi every semester.
I’m Michael Perry, and that’s my Perspective.
