This is just a weird story that I find fascinating... my mom told me this tonight and I am just floored.

My uncle is a blue collar, no nonsense kind of guy. He worked at a factory for his whole adult life and retired a few years ago. He spends three months a year at a rustic cottage in northern Ontario. He’s very quiet, and definitely wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. I knew he was a reader. He doesn’t talk about books, but he always has one with him. I found out from my mom that he reads completely indiscriminately. He simply doesn’t care what he reads. So when he moved to the town I grew up in (a little over 20 years ago) he walked into the public library and pulled the first dozen books he found on the adult fiction shelf, starting with the A’s. And he took them home and read them. Each week or so he returns to the library and gets the next set of books on the shelf. Once the librarians got to know him, they started pulling the books for him. He takes out 30 at a time - always the next 30 or so on the shelf. When they get new books in that he would have previously read according to his progress through the shelves, they add them to his pile.

He is currently on the S’s.

I have never heard of someone reading so haphazardly. He literally just opens the next book in the stack and starts reading. If non fiction books get mis-shelved in the fiction section, he reads them. Once a cookbook ended up in his pile. He read it cover to cover. He never abandons a book. He has no opinion on which author or genre he prefers. He just reads.

Wow, that is fascinating. Does he have super concentration powers? A complete openness to any and all new ideas? I wonder what the necessary dispositional components are that would be needed to do this kind of reading? Whatever they are, I’m sure I don’t have them!

Imagine how much he would know, if he only read non fiction!

This makes me wonder if he's reading for content, or just reading for the act of reading. Like reading the back of the cereal box

John Cage would have loved this story.

In one of his books, he writes about a woman waiting in line to buy a train ticket. She asked the person in front of her where he was going. He mentioned some town in Ohio. She bought a ticket there and lives there to this day.

Chance operations.

quote:

Originally posted by RealPlayer:
John Cage would have loved this story.

In one of his books, he writes about a woman waiting in line to buy a train ticket. She asked the person in front of her where he was going. He mentioned some town in Ohio. She bought a ticket there and lives there to this day.

Chance operations.

What a great story!

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
This makes me wonder if he's reading for content, or just reading for the act of reading. Like reading the back of the cereal box

I have no idea. I know he retains what he’s read as he can tell within a few pages if he’s read it before. He also will sometimes comment to another person that he’s read the book they are reading (which is hilarious when it’s a bodice-ripper, because he doesn’t fit the stereotypical audience).

That's remarkable.

People are so interesting!