If death and taxes are the only things that we can be certain about in this world, as Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1789, it must be almost certain that most people will pass away without having read many of the books they wanted to read, not to mention all the books they felt they should have read. Books not read feature twice in our Christmas Books section this month: The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich is the subject of the first (p35), while a leading theoretical physicist admits that he has only read a few pages of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (see Shelf life: Lee Smolin (p43)).
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