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Meaning in Pre-read and why it matters

There are over129 million different books, according toengineers for the Google Books project. That’s so many books! If you read one book an hour without sleep, it would take you 15,000 years to finish them all. But a super reliable source (Wikipedia) tells me that approximatelytwo million new titles are published each year, so you would need to read 228 books every hour just to keep up. I can’t read that fast. Not even University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 can read that fast, and he has superpowers.

No one should blame Eisgruber, then, if he does not choose the perfect book for Princeton Pre-read. He has other presidential duties and can’t spend all his hours book-picking. It’s a wonder he finds time to book-pick at all. But he does. The Class of 2018 got bubble-wrapped copies of “Meaning in Life and Why It Matters” by Susan Wolf GS ’78when we were little pre-frosh.

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“I hope that itwill introduce the freshmen to the kinds of scholarship they will encounter at Princeton,” Eisgruber said of the Pre-read program. Wolf’s book was well-suited for this. More philosophical than practical, it reads a lot like a dissertation. She defines terms like “subjective” and “objective” worth and asserts that goldfish-gazing is not a meaningful way to spend our lives. (Shucks.) Her 63-page argument is followed by 70 pages of critical comments, which teach the conventions of academic dialogue. As a work of philosophy, “Meaning in Life” is probably really good, which I can say with authority because I took one philosophy class when I was 15 years old.

However, I don’t think that “Meaning in Life” was as great a pick for non-philosophers. Wolf did not imagine that her audience would be 18-year-olds bombarded with the distractions of summer. She especially did not imagine that she would have to compete against bubble wrap for her reader’s attention.I, for one, do not have a heart stony enoughto choose highbrow books over bubbles.

I am not alone. According to a deeply scientific survey that I conducted within my zee group, more than half of freshmendid not read the entire book. Among participants who did, not one said it was useful to them. This is so sad! Libraries are filled with useful books, and even though we will never find the perfect one, we should still try to find a book that will move people, help people or change their lives somehow. The summer before college is a critical time for us. We are still impressionable. Work and stress do not constrain us.The books admitted students read will influence the way they think forever, and Eisgruber must consider this when selecting a book for Pre-read.

Maybe this year he will pick “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou or “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Or a biography of Benjamin Franklin, or a book about time management or “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families” by Philip Gourevitch a first-hand chronicle of the genocide in Rwanda. These books are readable, and they can favorably shape or change the way a person acts and thinks.

Of course, my proposals are imperfect because I cannot read 228 books an hour. Someone who reads more than I do can suggest better books. Eisgruber himself is better read than I will ever be, so I am trusting him to pick a good book for the Class of 2019. When picking, I hope he will keep in mind the audience and where they are in their lives. “Meaning in Life” was a treat for academics, but admitted students are not academics yet. They are children. Erudite treatises will put them to sleep.I understand the desire to introduce us to scholarship early, but have faith in the University. Our professors and our curriculum will do the introducing soon enough. Instead, let’s give the Class of 2019 something engaging and inspiring — a book they’ll want to read and which will move them more than the magic of bubble wrap.

Newby Parton is a freshman fromMcMinnville, Tenn. He can be reached at newby@princeton.edu.

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