Where's my island?

I've downloaded so many free books to read on my Kindle for PC that I need a few years on an island, reading all day, to get through them. Overwhelming and humbling, how much is out there that I want to read. What would the culture be like if we only read dead authors and current authors wrote only for an audience in the future? "Here's what we were like." What would the culture be like if the arts were completely de-commercialized? I think of Philip Glass' remark, that all art should be presented anonymously.