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On August 8th, George R. Cole ‘14 set a Brown record for making it through a staggering 183 pages of “The Dew Breaker” by Edwidge Danticat. This shattered the previous held record by Leslie Wright ‘11, who made it all the way to page 104 of Alain de Botton’s “How Proust Can Change your Life” back in the summer of 2007.
Cole’s effort represents a monumental achievement, especially in an age where Flash games, Facebook,and Netflix Instant Watch have made reading an even lamer activity.
“I had a pretty boring internship, so there was a lot of downtime,” said Cole, who is known for his modesty and extreme geekiness. “I usually had a good hour or so between the 10:30 coffee rush and the midday lunch orders. Also, it really helped that my BlackBerry’s wi-fi broke halfway through July.” Cole then pushed up his glasses and took a puff from his inhaler.
“Cole represents exactly the kind of clueless nerd we so eagerly seek to fill a specific demographic,” announced Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron. “By letting Cole satisfy that role, we were able to take so many extra hipsters, frat bros and smart-asses,” she said, raising an eyebrow knowingly. “We hope that during Cole’s time at Brown he continues to distinguish himself by reading part of his books.”
Cole did not receive such signs of admiration from his longtime rival Quentin Greene. Greene, an endurance reader and fan favorite, only managed to make it to page 70 by summer’s end. “Whatever, I was just too busy writing my Happy Days/Star Wars fan fiction,” he said. “When you introduce the force, all that stuff with Fonzie hitting the jukebox to make it work makes A LOT more sense.”
Overall, Greene seemed unfazed by his loss to Cole. “Everyone knows the summer reading is a joke anyway. I’m clearly the superior dork. You know those online New York Times articles that are like six pages? I make it to page three or four ON AVERAGE. I’d like to see George make it through page two without stopping to watch a silly cat video.”
Cole later took his stupefying nerdery to an even higher level by actually writing a letter to his college advisor in which he also worked in references to the book. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Applied Mathmatics Professor Mark Leighty. “How the hell did spamguard not catch this thing? I wrote my email service
provider a long, angry message.” When his professional obligations and responsibility were called into question, Leighty responded, “Look, I study population dynamics using statistical reference and advanced correlations. I really don’t care about some dickweed student’s overwrought, philosophical musings on a book I skimmed.”
“I don’t even want to be an advisor,” Leighty continued. “Hopefully we will have one short meeting where I tell him to take ‘City Politics’ and then never see him again. Sure, I’ll have to give him his registration code when the new semester rolls around, but only over the Internet, and only after he emails me exactly three times. Assuming the spamguard still isn’t working.”
