Member-only story
What You Need to Know About Being “Well-Read”
It’s a worthy but impossible goal
What does it really mean to be “well-read”?
No one actually knows.
The dictionary definition says,
“…a person knowledgeable and informed as a result of extensive reading.”
Okay. But knowledgeable about what? Could you have a person who is knowledgeable about hickory trees, and only hickory trees, be considered well-read? Even if she knew EVERY existing fact about hickory trees because of all the books she read about them?
Nope.
To be “well-read” means to know a lot about multiple subjects because you’ve learned from multiple books in multiple genres about multiple time periods.
Amanda Nelson in a BookRiot blog probably had the best definition:
“–the term “well-read” has always had a hazy, nebulous character to me. It lies somewhere near “reads a lot of classics” and left of “knows about obscure authors I’ve never heard of, especially ones from other countries” and generally around “understands Everything in All The Books and therefore has something interesting to add to almost every conversation” and perhaps even “reads For Fun what most of us read For Guilt And Bragging Rights.”
To be well-read, rely on categories instead of lists of titles
Look on the internet, and you’ll find dozens of lists that tell you which books you need to read to be well-read. But there’s a problem. None of those lists are the same. Everyone has a different idea of what’s important.
Christina Hartman advises that being well-read is not about individual titles as much much as it is about categories of books.
If you want to be considered “well-read,” try this. Instead of checking off titles from someone’s pre-ordained list, create your own menu based on categories. Choose books from a variety of genres, time periods, and countries. Read a few in each of these groups every year:
- “Classics,” both Western and Non-Western
- Dystopian
- Science-Fiction and Fantasy
