There are a lot of important books Kieran Healy didn’t get around to reading this year; he lists ten. I didn’t read any of those either, and chances are good I never will read most of them.
Back in the days when I was teaching, I often noted to students that, as each month passed, the percentage of books and journal articles that I should have read that I had actually read was decreasing. That trend continues unabated.
While it is a strange thing to say given that I now make a living in the book publishing business, I actually don’t read a great number of non-fiction books anymore (aside from those for which I’m personally responsible). The core of most of these are available in article format, digestable in a much shorter period of time while presenting as much information as I’m likely to actually remember a few months down the line anyway.
(Hat tip: Invisible Adjunct, who wonders how much of a book one can read and still claim not to have read it.)
