"I just read what is interesting to me," Gaul said. "I don't pay attention to the best-seller lists, but I do try to read all kinds of award-winning literature. I have read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction books."

Of the Modern Library's top 100 English-language books of the 20th Century, Gaul said he has read them all, except for James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake." He said he refused to stumble through the 672-page experimental novel, but not because of its length.

"It's just nonsense," he said. "There are words in there that aren't even words."

The number of books Gaul has read averages to more than one a week since the day he was born, but of course there were times when he couldn't read that many -- or, of course, couldn't read at all. In 1954 while he was attending law school at Georgetown, he only read five books the entire year. But every year except one since 1994 he has read more than 100 books a year, sometimes topping 150.

"Now that I'm retired, I read about 10 to 12 books a month," Gaul said. "I don't have any goals about reading a certain number of books, though. I never have. It's not the number that counts."

What matters is the knowledge he said he gains from the words he takes in.

"I used to think the worst thing that could happen to me was to go blind, but there are ways to get around that, I suppose," Gaul chuckled. "Nobody's as nuts as I am about books."

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