More Than Just Counting Volumes

This article from Karl Rove served as a motivation for New Year's Resolution #2. President Bush, one of the busiest men in the planet, was able to read 95 books in 2006, 51 in 2007, and 40 in 2008. So I should not blame my busy schedule for my lack of reading.

Yet it is more than just counting volumes. I remember this quote from Mortimer Adler:

"There are two ways in which one can own a book.The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself... You buy a beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher's icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be absorbed in your bloodstream to do you any good." (Mortimer Adler, How to Mark a Book, Saturday Review, 6 July 1940)

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