| "When are you going to put together my reading | | | | 'reading.' A bunch of lists should come up." "That's |
| list?" Daddy asked. A hush fell over the kitchen. | | | | no good." His cheeks hardened. "Those lists are |
| He'd been asking me about this for weeks now, | | | | impersonal - based on polls or the whims of some |
| and wasn't it the least I could do? After all, I'd | | | | critic who doesn't even know me. I want a list |
| taken his handouts during not one, not two, but | | | | that's just for me." I rolled my eyes. With |
| three degrees in English Literature. Recently | | | | everything else on my mind, did I have time for |
| retired, Daddy had decided to take up reading for | | | | this? Then I recalled an essay I'd read in grad |
| reasons that were characteristically quantitative. | | | | school, Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library." |
| The house was crammed with novels, memoirs | | | | What drives someone to read and collect books, |
| and anthologies that my mom and I had been | | | | Benjamin suggests, is anything but rational: "I am |
| reading all our lives and their sheer number had | | | | not exaggerating when I say that to a true |
| convinced my dad that there must be something | | | | collector the acquisition of an old book is its |
| to this reading thing. Now that he was no longer | | | | rebirth. This is the childlike element which in a |
| building steel plants, it was time to roll up his | | | | collector mingles with the element of old age. For |
| sleeves and delve into the world of literature. | | | | children can accomplish the renewal of existence |
| "Why don't you just go online?" I said. "Google | | | | in a hundred unfailing ways. |