[D-Machine]

People that think "reading books" generically is anything to be impressed about have been woefully out of touch for well over a decade.

After you've done about 50 or so major classics, selected broadly from different thinkers and authors, it is clear the vast majority of most books have negligible additional value. This can all be done quickly in your late teens to early twenties, after that, there is no real need to read more than a book or two in a year, and even then, it is not usually worth reading those one or two in entirety.

Digital textual sources like the ones you mention have far more continued and sustained value at this point.

[eudamoniac]

I'd say more like 500. There is no end to worthwhile books to read, you just won't find them in the NYT best sellers. The complete works of Shakespeare is like 35 "books" already.

Agreed to your larger point that reading is of itself not worthwhile. Reading great works of literature broadly is.

[D-Machine]

I waffled on choosing 100-250 initially, thinking similarly as you for authors like Shakespeare, Freud, Nietzsche, etc.

But then I kind of thought, for most people, that is probably overkill. If you stick with just one text from each great author, 50 is still a huge variety relative I think to what was available to people in the past. More is great, but not necessary: there are plenty of other sources of depth in life beyond texts, and text doesn't work well for everyone either.

[eudamoniac]

Fair enough. I'd say there are over 500 "worth reading" but I agree with you too that with 50 or fewer you can have enough. People used to re-read texts dozens of times and that may actually be better in some ways than the constant novelty.

[D-Machine]

Yup, don't disagree with you at all here.