I’ve Read NONE of the Publishers’ Weekly Top 20 Bestsellers For 2012

I’m not sure if this is good or bad but I’ve read none of PW 2012 bestsellers.  The PW piece notes that only one book not written by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games, etc.) or E.L. James (the 50 Shades trilogy) broke the one million copies sales mark – Jeff Kinney’s latest Wimpy Kid book.  Beyond these three we have Bill O’Reilly’s latest ahistorical historical novels on Kennedy and Lincoln – the Lincoln book voted one of the least historically accurate books by the American Historical Association – a religious novel, Rowling’s foray into adult fiction and, bringing up the rear, the latest Grisham novel. Thin gruel for readers expecting substance in their fiction reading.

Thinking about how my reading interests must diverge significantly from the reading interests of those who buy books that create the top 20 list I thought of a poem that is an endless chain of contingencies that begin and end with the statement “Eating food from McDonald’s is mathematically impossible.”

In the middle of that chain are these related events:

and before you can lose a lot of your creativity, you have to stop reading books.

And before you can stop reading books, you have to think that you would benefit from reading less frequently.

And before you can think that you would benefit from reading less frequently, you have to be discouraged by the written word.

—“McDonalds is Impossible” by Chelsea Martin.

Well, yes, going through the PW top 20 list does make me a bit discouraged by the written word.