In my Commonplace...

It will be discouraging to some and consoling to others to realize that very little of our growth as readers can be planned. It is certainly possible to read the 189 books Charles Van Doren associates with The Joy of Reading, the 173 indispensables that he and Mortimer Adler list at the end of How to Read a Book, and most certainly the sixteen texts that Michael Dirda says will open the world of literature to you--but it is not possible to acquire by force of will the enjoyment of all of them, or any. The 'self-conquest' Auden recommends will always be achieved, when it is achieved at all, by hook or by crook, unmethodically, unpredictably. We must consent to be guided by the invisible hand of serendipity.   Alan Jacobs