This is a true story which I heard from one of my Chinese friends.
nce upon a time there was an American
boy who received an offer from his
dream university, Harvard. He decided
to study his beloved major, engineering. However, there was only one lecture, Middle English Literature, that made him suffer severely during class. Particularly the professor was quite aged and spoke terribly slow without any passion, which made the student incredibly bored. Because of that, he always skipped that class. Finally, summer break arrived, and he found a job at a bookstore near th university and started making some pocket money. This bookstore often received calls from others to collect used books for resale purposes. The boy’s job was to go and count the books and decide how many boxes would be needed to transfer all the books.
One day, his boss sent him to someone’s house which was nearby. When he got there an old woman opened the door looking incredibly sad. She introduced herself and it turned out that she was the wife of the professor who taught the Middle English Literature lecture. He learned the professor had passed away shortly after his last lecture of the semester.
The professor’s wife decided to sell all of his books since they reminded her of him. While browsing through all of the bookshelves, the boy saw one shelf full of detective fiction books. He found that to be a somewhat funny because he didn’t imagine such a serious looking professor could like detective fictions.
Then the old woman led him to a small garden behind the big study room, pointed to some flowers and said, “My husband’s biggest hobby was planting different flowers and plants. He loved learning about them.” Next to those flowers were two more big shelves filled with gardening books. There was even a Plant Atlas.
After roughly a half an hour of perusing through all the professor’s different types of books the boy called his boss and said, “Boss, I would like to buy all these books!” He negotiated with his boss that he would work at the bookstore for free during the upcoming semester breaks in exchange for taking all of the books himself.
The boy started to read the professor’s books, and after a while he felt like he started to learn who the professor was, just by scanning those books. Some say that the kind of books a person reads can totally reflect their soul and I think it’s true. By reading through a person’s book list, you could easily discover the person’s hobbies, interests and start to feel like you know that persons soul.
Reading is my life’s biggest entertainment and reading can also create a vivid personality. If you go through my reading list, which includes travel guides from different countries, celebrity biographies, management skills, golfing techniques and so on, I believe you might get to “know” me. That leads me to ask you this. What does your study, reading room or bookshelf look like? I would love to know! Send me your reading list and let me see if I can discover who you are. Or… at least refer me to a good book that I should indulge!
O
Diane von Furstenberg Study Room
Karl Lagerfelds Library