I was reading an article this morning about immortality and whether or not it’s a good thing. The author used an example of a stamp collector to illustrate one of his points: a stamp collector knows they will not collect every stamp ever, but mortality makes the journey more interesting and fun. If the stamp collector were to live forever, acquiring every stamp would be easy, and the journey meaningless.

Of course, I had to think about how reading would work with immortality! I’m actually unsure if you could read every book that’s ever been published since the printing press, especially when new ones come out every week, even with immortality. Like on the surface it sounds like you totally could because what else are you going to do with infinite time, but there have been soooo many books since the printing press, plus indie books, both physically and digitally published, and there’s always an anticipated novel.

Not to mention, with the way we’re treating our planet, you may be immortal, but humanity as a whole isn’t, and books will probably be gone after the apocalypse, so time is limited either way.

Well, barring any existential threat to humanity itself, would you choose to become immortal so you could read every accessible published book? Or would you decline? Or maybe something in the middle: become immortal as long as it takes to read every accessible published book (not including books that will be published after today, or else you truly might be immortal)? For clarity: you’d only have to read one edition of The Lord of the Rings, not literally every edition published, and you’d need to make a good faith effort (reading every day and no DNFs until after 50 pages).

I think I would decline. I would have to become a nomad and spend my days traveling and reading, which sounds nice on the surface; the first decade or so might be amazing, but eventually every day would become the same.