Completely Booked

"Would you look at him? Sittin' there with his hooter scrapin' away at that book!"

I love to read.

Despite the fact that I probably read way more than the average person, I always seem to put “read more” on any to-do or new year’s list. That was the case again at the dawn of January ‘10 when I was planning out my goals for this year. Another was to “write more” and thus this turns into a “two birds, one stone” situation, but first the reading part.

You may have noticed a meme traveling along internet message boards, blogs, and social networking sites entitled “52 in 52”. The goal inherent is to read at least 52 books in 52 weeks, one book for each week of the year. You can see how this would be attractive to me.

I’ve been contemplating keeping track of what I read ever since stumbling upon Art Garfunkel’s list. Ol’ Artie, of Simon & Garfunkel fame for those of you on the more youthful side, has kept a list of everything he has read since 1968. You can view the complete list on his website.

http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html

I find Art’s list more than a bit pretentiously selective, it’s hard to believe he’s not read any genre fiction in 40 years, but the idea of the list is intriguing and attractive to me. So I’m going to do Art one better. Not only will I keep count and list the books I’ve read from 2010 on, I will give my impression of each one in this blog. I’m not going to strictly adhere to the “52 in 52” concept. I don’t want to find myself bound to reading shorter, easier to finish books in order to reach the magic 52. I want to read what I feel like, when I feel like it. If I reach 52, all the better, but that’s not the ultimate point, it’s to read and write more and maybe turn some of you on to good books in the process.

Also since I don’t read in a void and me being me, I’ll probably throw in what I’m listening to or watching from time to time.

Here’s my “read” list for the year so far;

1. Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts 2/21/10
2. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime – John Heilemann and Mark Halperin 3/6/10
3. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Steig Larsson 3/15/10
4. The Replacements: All Over But The Shouting – Jim Walsh 3/23/10
5. Then We Came To The End – Joshua Ferris 3/28/10

If you are wondering about the gap from the beginning of the year and when I finished Shantaram, that novel was 933 pages long. It wasn’t exactly something one can breeze through in a weekend.

Expect a review of “Then We Came To The End” shortly.