Today is January 7th, and this is not usually a good day. 20 years ago, a big thing happened. I feel an emotional impact all day on 1/7 that I can't rightly describe using any of the words you people have come up with, so I've decided to channel this feeling, this year, into something interesting and hopefully productive.
I try to read 100 books a year. Last year I fell short, often I make it, sometimes I exceed it. This year, I'm on my third book on the seventh day, so that seems pretty good, and I thought that I would invite other people to join me on this endeavor. If you're interested, we could find some way to track our progress as a group. Or you could set some other goal: 50, or 75. You could track pages. Whatever.
Rules? I read a lot of graphic novels, but/and many of them contain adult literary material that's unmatched by some of the straight prose I read. I also read a lot of fiction and YA books. I typically intersperse this with history, sociology and current events nonfiction, crime stuff, music history, books about art, biographies, and anything else that takes my fancy. Page counts of what I read tend to range as an average from 100 to 600. My basic rules for counting are these: I don't count children's books (which I still read occasionally, and sometimes even to my kids) I don't count anything devoid of literary merit (I didn't count the Twilight books the month I read them, for example) in my ex post facto assessment thereof, and I don't count anything without a proper readable spine. No comics and magazines, articles, studies, tracts or pamphlets. I read those, I just don't put them in the count. If you read on a digital reader or listen to books on whatever, I'd say count it if would have had a spine. You are free, obviously, to count however you'd like.
Mostly, I feel like this would be a good way for smart people I know to be encouraged to read more, and might make better synergistic (yep) use of our independent Goodreads lists, blogs, and assorted reading activity measurements. Also, I hope to collect some straight up recommendations and discussions out of this, like a virtual book club. Mostly, though, it's about reading goals and challenges.
Anybody with me on this?