Who is smarter, the person who reads 5000 books or the person who avoids it?

 I was prompted to write about not reading and hell, I cant wait! 

"I like to make fun of books," I said, and I actually have said this. So here is me giving some real criticism of books from every angle I can come up with on the spot. Because being smart isn't about books, is it?

First of all, let's make fun of "Good Will Hunting" because that guy was on the right track but the writer BLEW THE SCENE by making him another "Rain Man". In the scene, which I can no longer share because my links have been disabled, the star, Will, tells this show off-y guy that anyone and everyone can read the material which he is presenting to seem smart to a girl in a bar. It isn't that books aren't the source of all the knowledge he is tasked with counter showing off to the same female, it's that books are available at the library. Anyone can read them. He then flubs his credibility by recalling the page number where the quote is that the guy is using to show off with. We are supposed to believe that Will is a genius because not only is he well read but, he's ......

You know what? In order to be really smart you have to have hung out in bars to know the curriculum and memorize the page numbers. Wrong. You have to be "Rain Man". 

And here we have the best and the brightest in the, no! Not just the USA. They send their kids from all over the globe to HARVARD, it takes a real READER to know its the leisure of sweeping those halls that get's real problems solved! 

Why don't we look at the books themselves, so we can make a better claim about them. We can start with Plato's "The Republic", of which we have to depend on him to rightly recall much of his predecessor Socrate's many dialogical arguments. It isn't that writing isn't important, I mean reading, it's just that there are other verifiable forms of learning that seem to be of no use whatsoever to reading snobs. And further, the experience of reading whole books  seems to be an intellectuals greatest bragging rights. When there are articles - magazines and newspapers, blogs, many on social media-  which are filled with small parts of great depth. In fact, what we should argue isn't that books are the greatest source of knowledge, but some of the better sources of arguments and the mastering of men vs. men. At least in their own minds where they learn to discover their own opinions about material and the aptitude of those who are holding them captivated. But they also seem to be a source of self agrandizement, sources of clique-like group think which render the person reading them self professed experts in their own minds on subjects that may or may not truly give an opportunity to become an expert without real life experience. 

But the books themselves! The writers have to be the most distasteful part. Each has to be tasted, FOR REAL, by the reader prior to finishing. It takes a certain kind of mind to be able to engage with any other mind at length. Kudos to those who can actually read 5000 books! There are writers who like to write in metaphors, writers who like to use run on sentences. Writers who gush, who swear, who repeat themselves incessantly. Writers who write five page monologs, writers who know too much, and worse, don't consider themselves a bore. Writers who seem stupid, writers who are too liberal or conservative to take seriously. And all that for 200-400 pages, and if you're active minded or have a life, it's not smarts we consider in our reader. Its talent. 

Also, the many disposable "helping" reads have a detestable format that goes something like Chapter 1- summarize what's repeated in 1-4, mention what's repeated in 5-10. There are a lot of dollar store books in credible bookstores!

Some books are written by men who know the material so well they don't care that it sounds like jargon. That's what I've found in "The Disappearing Spoon". I read a philosopher this summer who seemed a good regurgitating showman. Dostoyevsky's monologues are hard to swallow, as is the tender love Charles Dickens wants us to have for the blonde in "A Tale of Two Cities". Anyone who reads Dante is mentally gifted, sure, but also of a significantly uncommon character. All books are thought provoking, they are. If you have a brain, taste and an opinion. But if you have all three, it gets more difficult, not easier! At least for me it does. 

But reading! Reading is wonderful! Knowing and learning are so grand! Videos, pictures conversations, explorations and experience all enrich a person. So 6000 books, 10,000 even, might deserve congratulations, but in the end, smarts come from everywhere!