2008 Roundup

By my calculations, I read 26 books from 'The List' this year, plus another half dozen or more that were not on the list. Not bad considering I didn't get started in earnest until late spring. This year I'll need to make up for some lost ground. I'm most of the way through 'Love in the Time of Cholera' right now and received several more books for Christmas.

I am working from the first edition list of 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die. There was an updated version this year that changed several of the books, but I figure I'll stick with the one I started with.

It has been a great year of reading and I'm looking forward to seeing what new authors I'll discover this year.

Welcome!

This blog is being created more as a reading diary than as a public forum, although friends and family are welcome to browse, post comments, or to give recommendations. Why create a reading blog? I can explain everything...

I have always been a voracious reader. When I was young, my mother cleverly paid my allowance in Hardy Boys mysteries instead of cash. The results were twofold: first, I developed a love for stories and reading, and secondly, I became rather anal about lists and collections. To this day, I can be obsessive about having complete sets of the work of my favorite authors and musicians. I like series of things. I love lists. I used to religiously catalog each of the Agatha Christie mysteries as I finished them. I was sad when I had plowed through all eighty-some novels by the time I was seventeen.

Whilst in college, I began a campaign of cultural edification. I read Dostoevsky, Dickens, and classics from Ken Kesey, Phillip Roth, and began an infatuation with the works of John Irving.

During my late twenties and early thirties I moved on from fiction of all sorts to history. I couldn't get enough. This parlayed directly into a career change from corporate trainer to high school teacher. Books led me there, without a doubt.

In this, my forty-first year, I discovered the 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die list. I thought of myself as being fairly well-read and was astounded when I discovered I'd only read 30 of the books on the list. Friends of mine were well into the hundreds when I urged them to make an accounting for themselves. My literary OCD kicked in and I began reading exclusively from the list in earnest.

It has been a very gratifying experience. Without question, I have been exposed to many novels and authors I probably would have remained entirely ignorant of. As of this writing, I am up to 52 books from the list and counting. I have re-discovered my love of literature and my love of lists.

This blog will feature my thoughts and musings on the books I read or have read previously. Not all will be from the list, although I'll label them as such when they are. If you stumble across this, please join in if you see fit. Again, I am intending it primarily as a reading diary, not as a device for me to pose as a literary critic, which I most certainly am not.

The name of this blog? I downloaded a spreadsheet of the 1001 books which allowed a person to identify the books he or she had read. Afterward, you plug your age into a box and, using average life expectancies, the spreadsheet kicks out how many books a year you would have to read to finish the list. For me, it was 28 books a year.