I’m reading The Magus, a bizarre but fascinating novel based on an isolated Greek island in the 1950s. This first started out of necessity, not out of choice, as the September’s required reading in a book-reading club.
In this story, an old millionaire who owns thousands of books but despises of novel, tell “me”:
“Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach a half dozen very little truths?”
This is exactly what I have been thinking of novels for this several years. I am sure I read more than an avarage person but most of the time it is to get new ideas, new information, and to know any “truths” which dominates this world we live in.
Specially this book, with more than 600 pages filled with complicated words (I tap on my electric dictionary 10 times on average for a single page) and set in 1950s when any guy in their late 20s were supposed to get married, scared me off.
And now I find myself keep on reading this without getting bored, though slowly. As soon as I open the book, I can visualize that Magus world and see things through the eyes of “me”.
Though I won’t get much of any practical advise like that from Peter F. Drucker’s The effective exectutive which is another book I am reading – Do the right things rather than doing things right – something tells me I will take this experience valuable no less than reading Drucker when I finish this.