Agreed!

"Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, experience. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring."

- John Locke (1704)

Why indeed

"Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all. -Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilise it."

Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Books read in 2015

1.     The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith

2.     Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie (re-read)

3.     Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie (re-read)

4.     The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year - Sue Townsend

5.     The Sayings of Confucius - Tsai Chih Chung

6.     And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie (the play)

7.     Death of an Expert Witness - P.D. James

8.     Buried Angels - Camilla Lackberg

9.     Appointment with Death - Agatha Christie (the play)

10.   Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot

11.   The Hollow - Agatha Christie (the play)

12.   The Mousetrap - Agatha Christie (the play)

13.   Down the Darkest Road - Tami Hoag

14.    Witness for the Prosecution - Agatha Christie (the play)

15.    The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 - Sue Townsend

16.    Broken Monsters - Lauren Beukes

17.    Towards Zero - Agatha Christie (the play)

18.     Verdict - Agatha Christie (the play)

19.    Go Back for Murder - Agatha Christie (the play)

20.    Spellbound - Dominic Alexander (by Reader's Digest)

21.    Deeper than the Dead - Tami Hoag

22.    Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda 

23.     A Certain Justice - P. D. James

24.     Death Comes as the End - Agatha Christie (re-read)

25.     The Fever - Megan Abbott

26.      Miss Marple's Final Cases - Agatha Christie

27.     A Girl is a Half-formed Thing - Eimear McBride

28.     The Origins of Zen - Tsai Chih Chung

29.     The Separation - Dinah Jefferies

30.     The Story of Psychology - Anne Rooney

31.      The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

32.      Moby Dick - Herman Melville (re-read)

33.      Great Battles - Christer Jorgensen (General Editor)