Conversations we are not having

In my first year of graduate school, one of my professors gave us a brief impromptu lecture on reading scholarly works.  Among other things, he gave us a sage bit of advice: at some point, we would decide that certain approaches were wrong, or just intellectually non-productive for us.  And that was OK.  In other words, there were academic conversations in which we were not going to participate. 

I've been thinking about this advice since round #1001 of "There's too much research! Nobody can ever read all of it!"  Because, quite honestly, who tries? You read the "canon" of your particular field.  You read what is relevant to your work.  You read the people with whom you are carrying on a conversation.   You read what looks interesting.   But you don't read everything.    Which is not the same thing as saying that we should all be sitting in our neatly enclosed little intellectual enclaves; one of the nice things about reviewing for Choice is that I'm always being sent books I might not have thought to pick up otherwise.  Nobody can predict from where inspiration will strike, after all.  At the same time, the boundaries of "relevance"--and, thus, of the conversation--are always moving: if you suddenly need to learn about the emergence of the tourist industry, despite otherwise specializing in Milton, then you go learn about the emergence of the tourist industry.