'If you want to know how I know about every book here, I can tell you! Because I never read any of them.'

Thus does a librarian in Robert Musil's novel "The Man Without Qualities" explain how he easily keeps up with the library's collection.

"Reading, he says, would make him lose perspective on the collection as a whole; to prize a few books by reading them would only make him neglect the others," wrote Rosie Blau in her June 20, 2009 "Book Doctor" column in The Financial Times.

I am reminded of Truman Capote's remark that you don't have to read books — it's enough to simply have them.