Limited By Nothing

I have noticed that many people seem to hold a strange stand on the concept of reading books. For example, on MySpace there’s a section where you can list all of your favorite books and sometimes I come across a few profiles that have something similar to the following written in there:

“I read lots of books all the time. I have almost over 300 books in my room.”

What kind of books are we talking about here? Coloring books? Cat In The Hat? Romance titles where every fifth word is a creative synonym for penis or vagina? Why do people find the need to brag about the number of books they have, instead of mentioning some of the titles that they have particularly enjoyed reading? Is it because society tells us that the more books we read, the more intelligent and smarter we will seem like? My cynical side just says that the people who need to mention that amount of books they own (Without even mentioning one or two specific titles) are bending the truth to seem more intelligent than most, while in actuality the only books they have probably read was the ones that they have assigned for summer reading back in high school (Even then only the Cliffs Notes version).

Then there’s this dating web site called OkCupid, which I sometimes browse around on as well. One day I have noticed that someone had the following statement written on their profile under the “You should message me if…” section:

“If you don’t read at least one book every month, please do not contact me. I only want to talk with intelligent people.”

Seriously, what? There isn’t a correlation between the number of books you read and how intelligent you are. Sure, reading books improves your vocabulary and the way you can express yourself in writing, but I believe you can be an intelligent and smart person without ever even touching a book. For one, you can read random pages on Wikipedia and learn about the subjects that interest you without having to wade through lots of pages of filler text. What if you don’t have time to read 700 pages about some nerd wizard’s adventures of flying around on a broom and saving the world? Does that make one stupid?

“Let’s have a book discussion, dear! Well, let me just talk for an hour or so about this rather obscure book I have read about someone’s feelings on the autumn of 1978…”