Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[jasonlulu_2000]

When one of my teachers suggested to his sleepy tenth-grade English class that a person could not have a "complicated idea" until he had read at least two thousand books, I heard the words without recognizing either its irony or its very complicated truth. I merely determined to make a list of all the books I had ever read. Strict with myself, I included only once a title I might have read several times. (How, after all, could one read a book more than once?) And I included only those books over a hundred pages in length. (Could anything shorter be a book?)

Why does the author write the two underlined sentences? For what purpose?

I want your opinion!

Thanks!

Jason

[IanT]

I think (but am not sure!) that the author includes these two sentences as a way of commenting on his younger self, to show that when he was younger he perhaps did not understand as much about books as he does now.

So, perhaps now he might believe that you can read the same book twice in a different way, because you have changed meanwhile. And perhaps now he would define a book not by length but by ideas.

If not, maybe those sentences are just included to show how he thought at the time, without any comparison. Hard to be sure.

Hope helps,
Ian
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