Writer’s Rant
February 7, 2026
Don’t Waste Your Time Reading
“An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.” (Charles de Montisquieu- French Political Philosopher who’s work helped to form the U.S. Constitution).
So, you claim to be a writer. But admit it, your books are boring. My books, your books, everyone’s books are boring. Except of course for the very few books that people find somewhat interesting.
Now you may think there is a lot of great, interesting literature out there, but that’s subjective and not based on fact. The fact is that you haven’t even read enough books to objectively say that most literature is interesting.
To test my theory, I googled how many books have been written in all of history. It was a ridiculous question that was impossible to answer. Google didn’t want to admit they didn’t know they answer and deferred to Reddit, who everyone knows is the authority on everything. While Reddit wasn’t able to answer my actual question, this was their response:
“They say that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the last person to have read everything. By the time he died there were too many books, they suggest, for any single brain to engage with. “They”, as usual, are wrong. There were already millions of books in Europe by the year 1500, just half a century after the first printed page flew from the first press. To read a million books in a lifetime you would have to read 40 a day for 70 years. I couldn’t even smoke half that many cigarettes for half as long before giving up and it takes a lot longer to read a book than to smoke a cigarette, let me tell you.” (Sir Stephen Fry, British Actor, Comedian, and Writer}
What cigarettes has to do with this I haven’t got a clue. Regardless, the bottom line here is that even speed readers can’t read 40 books a day. And even if you or I could, just how much would we really get from the story? Woody Allen said it best: “I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”
There is only one good thing about speed-reading; getting through a boring book really quickly. But if you’re not really taking the time to read, how do you even know it’s boring?
If you are a speed-reader, don’t buy my book. I don’t want you reading it. Save the bad reviews for someone who actually read it, said it was boring, and a complete waste of time. At least they know what their talking about.