Last Updated: April 06, 2013, 413 E. M. or 2013 C. E

• The question is: “Have you lost your intellectual virginity yet?”
• If you thought sex was great wait until you lose your intellectual virginity! It is even better. “How?” you might ask.
• As Macaulay said read the books which "moved the intellects which moved the world."

Marmontel, the French encyclopedist, playwright, and historiographer, lost his intellectual virginity -- according to Will Durant -- after reading Bayle and Voltaire.

• Did you know that while there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, they allow for 403,291,461,126,605,635,584,000,000 (that is, over 400 quatrillion) possible combinations?
• The Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000 different definitions, and, by their own count “3 million quotations.” Combined they are a mere fraction of the possible combinations.
• The Library of Alexandria, in the 5th century C. E., had from 750,000 to 1 million books.
• The Library of Congress has 134 million “materials.”
• The question to answer is: which books, out of the millions in print, are worth reading?
• We have those rare and out of print books that will cause you to lose your intellectual virginity.
• If you read one book per week for 50 years, you will have read only 2600 books.
• If you double the number of books read, 2 books per week for 50 years, you will have read only 5200 books.
• However, not all books are worth reading!
• We have the books that will provide the Ariadnean thread that will lead you out of the conceptual labyrinth of the written word.
• However, before you proceed you must first understand the sentence below. If you do not understand the following sentence then go and read for another decade so that you will be better prepared to accept the Ariadnean thread, as well as Ithuriel’s spear; for you will have earned it by then.

Can you understand this sentence?
He, lacking any metaphysical, epistemological, and existential apothogems, hebdomadally, and with anfructuosity, took an oculatory tour of her perambulating loveliness and serendipitously found his intestinal fortitude and, without absquatulating for having purchased the rope of Ocnus, punctuated his inamorata with osculatory favors for being his own personal mini-Hellen, even while knowing she would also suffer the fate of Acco.