For as long as I can remember, I've been a devotee of reference books. Even as a child, I owned well-read copies of the World Almanac, as well as every Book of Lists and People's Almanac produced by the Wallace family writing factory. We had a set of the World Book encyclopedia, and many an hour was spent reading up on whatever caught my interest at the moment. My mother also purchased a set of child-oriented thematically-organized reference books, I believe called the Childcraft series, which I eventually read in their entirety. My push to read even had a benefit when it came to the dreaded "sex talk". My father was ill-equipped to handle such a discussion. However, my mother had purchased a four-book Life Cycle series which dealt with these issues. Regardless of her intent, I read these books with great urgency, then over a two- or three-night series of conversations enlightened my three younger brothers on the mysteries of male and female sexual development. It may be a conicidence, but since to my knowledge none of us ever fathered a child out of wedlock or contracted an STD, I would consider those evenings successful.

Even today, I have a large library of reference materials. I recently joined the Folio Society, mainly to get my hands on their introductory set, which consisted of an atlas, biographical dictionary, dictionary of world history, a book of quotations and a general short encyclopedia. My almanac collection continues to grow, and I own thick volumes on subjects ranging from baseball history to collections of spells to fairies.

But the jewel of my current collection is the 19-volume macropaedia from the 1974 Enclyclopedia Brittanica. A few years back my then-employer was purging their library over space considerations, electing to rely more on online and CD-based research tools. Many volumes were available at no cost to employees, and I seized the Britannica. What became of the accompanying 11-volume micropaedia I have no idea (and never asked since I only recently learned of the distinction). Since taking possession, I have frequently considered reading the entire thing from A to Z. Thanks to A.J. Jacobs, I am now about to do so.

Jacobs is the author of "The Know-It-All", an account of his cover-to-cover reading of the 32-volume 2002 edition. It's a very entertaining book, with some bits clever enough that I actually dared to laugh our loud while using public transit. I highly recommend it. Anyway, looking at my 19 volumes, I'm not so intimidated by the task just knowing that Jacobs handled a much larger assignment. He read as much as five hours a day (presumably due in some part to a publisher's deadline) while I will hold myself to the less bracing minimum requirement of 30 minutes per day. I have made no effort to determine how long it will take me to complete this task, and I don't want to know.

Why take this on? Because for some time, like Jacobs, I've been feeling less smart than I used to. Part of this is age, part the shortage of time to keep up on things that I consider important, part the changes in my priorities and experiences in the move from a me-centric to family-centric environment. Pre-parenthood, I read all the time. Even now, reading still constitutes my main entertainment, but it's more magazines and similar light diversions that I can dip into and out of, not the serious commitments of "Gravity's Rainbow" and the like of my past. Through this endeavour, I hope to at least push my brain to work again once in awhile. I'll let you know how it goes.