A perfect post to leave you with as we head into the long weekend. Perhaps, like many people, you’ve been wondering what Art Garfunkel’s been reading for… oh… the last 39 years, give or take. Luckily, he’s been keeping track.
As a result, perusing through the nearly 1,000 books he’s read in that time, I now know that:
- When I was born, Art Garfunkel was reading Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur.
- When I graduated high school, he was reading “Our Crowd” by Stephen Birmingham.
- When I graduated college, he was reading Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
- And when I got married, he was reading Love, Groucho, the letters of Groucho Marx.
What was Art Garfunkel reading on the important dates in your life? (Thanks to John for sending that brilliant link my way)
My Birthday: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon
When I graduated the first time: Margaret A. Salinger's Dream Catcher
Second Graduation: Difficult to tell because he quit recording the month.
I found it interesting to see what he read while I was fighting in Iraq. I read what ever I could get my hands on, which was usually a book a person found on their bookshelf– dusty, dogeared, and unwanted– and placed into an office or church care package. Most FOBs had a stack of these books for trade. I traveled around so I would take a book from one location and trade it at the next FOB. This helped a twenty to thirty book library rotate its inventory. Art and I both ended up reading the Da Vinci Code around the same time. (A soldier I knew received it for Christmas.) None of the other books were the same. (Note: Shackleton's Valiant Voyage a book I picked up at FOB Tiger and left at FOB Byers, is great. I didn't see it on Art's list, but I didn't look though all 40 years.)
Oh man, I suddenly feel really old, apparently he didn't know how to read when I was born! I also feel lazy and unorganized, not only have I not read that many books, I forgot to write them all down! He was reading "Childhood's End" when I graduated from HS, which would make me…:-)