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.”
