People have been swamped with data since the 18th century, when inexpensive books and public libraries became common. For at least 200 years, my family has lived surrounded by more books than a person could read in a lifetime. This condition is humbling, but seldom debilitating. The only person I can think of who was hurt by this was the author Natsume Soseki. He was superb scholar of English, and the Japanese government sent him to England to study the language in 1900. When he went into the university library at Cambridge, he was so overwhelmed by the number of books he supposedly fell into depression, realizing that he could never read more than a tiny fraction of English literature. His friends found him weeks later buried under a pile of books, and worried that he might be going crazy.

- Jed

10 - the memoirs of countess du Barry

9 - love in excess (elizabeth haywood)

8 - la novelle heloise

7 - the american spelling book (noah webster)

6 - tom jones (henry fielding)

5 - the social contract (rousseau)

4 - the new england primer (another textbook)

3 - fanny hill (john cleland)

2 - gullivers travels (jonathan swift)

2 - robinson crusoe (daniel defoe)

1 - the bible

famous books that didn't make the cut:

• candide (voltaire)
• blake's poems (many volumes)
• the wealth of nations (adam smith)
• faust (goethe)
• everything by samuel johnson, immanuel kant, william wordsworth, votaire, alexander pope, john locke, robert burns, william blake . . .