Monday, January 26, 2009

Precious Reading Time

Yesterday we were listening to a John Bytheway talk in the car called "Weed Your Spirit, Grow Your Testimony." An excellent talk, but of course, John's are always great.

He mentioned something that he credited to Elder Joe J. Christensen. Elder Christensen pointed out that if you live to be 70 and read a book a week, you will read x number of books. I couldn't remember the number and not knowing exactly how he thought it out, I came up with my own. SO, if you live till age 75, and figuring that you don't learn to read until you're 5 (obviously not a high calibur of books at that point), I came up with 3640 as the number of books you could read in your lifetime. Not a real big number, considering that the Library of Congress has over 30 million books (thanks Wikipedia). So basically, if you read 577,000 a week, you'll make it through all of them. That's it!

I thought it was a very interesting bit of information. The moral of the story was, don't waste time reading junk. My moral of the story is, if you aren't already reading, get started!

6 comments:

  1. Wow...that puts in to perspective the quality of books you should read. I have another recommendation for you. Have you read Richard Peck's books? A year down yonder, Fair Weather, Here lies the Librarian are just a few--all great? I just finished another one that you have GOT to read with your boys. (great just what you need another must read book huh) Anyway it is called On the Wings of Heros. I fill silly telling you all about an author you probably know..but just in case you don't...Richard Peck writes awesome young adult books that are all based on history. This one is based on WWII many of his others take place around the turn of the century...meaning 1900s not 2000s Anyway, sorry if you are saying well duh, we read those books years ago. :D

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  2. Hey I wanted to ask you what your book group decided to read this year. Our planning meeting is in a couple days and i need some ideas too.

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  3. Dang! I was hoping to get through a lot more books than that! At the pace I'm going, it will be way less.

    Where do you get John Bytheway talks on tape?

    Cindi

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  4. Do I get extra "points" for textbooks I suffer through? Just say yes.

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  5. Kathryn - I've read "Long Way from Chicago" and "Year Down Yonder," but I haven't read anything else by him. Thanks for the other suggestions by him, just added "Heroes" to my goodreads and my paperbackswap wish list. Book group official list still undecided, but I'll send you the books we voted on.

    BTW, if anyone wants a copy of "Long Way from Chicago" I have an extra with my DI finds.

    Cindi - Adam gets them at the library but there are a lot available online through byubroadcasting.org. Just search for his name, we've never listened to a bad one.

    April - Half credit. :)

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