Why, Crime and Punishment? Why?

Can't sleep. Can't read either, apparently. Crime and Punishment sits on my bedside table, a Christmas card marking my place on page 202, as I surf the Web. Maybe I won't make it to 50 books this year, after all. After watching Midnight in Paris for the third time last night, I'm more interested in reading about Paris than about Russian criminals. Too bad I left A Year in the Merde at my parents' house before I was able to finish it. Fortunately, I was able to finish Paris Was Ours the other night. Highly recommend to any Francophiles, particularly anyone who lived in Paris. Americans who lived in Paris and came back to the States should start a support group--er, wine and cheese club.

Here's to 2:30 a.m. Dostoevsky reading. Yeehaw.

48 down, 104 to go

Success! I achieved my 2011 goal of 48 books last night by finishing The Story of Beautiful Girl. Looking back, my goal of 48 seems somewhat puny. I'm proud of myself, though, for transforming myself from an Internet surfer back to a reader of books. The purpose of my 48 books challenge was simply to get back into the habit of reading. Next year's challenge of two books a week will be more focused on reading great literature and learning about subjects that intrigue me.

Up next for this year:

- Paris Was Ours, Penelope Rowlands (will finish tonight)

- Freakonomics (a literally dog-eared copy once ingested by a canine friend)

- Black Sun by Julia Kristeva, a writer who managed to intrigue me in grad school even when I wanted to hit my professor in the head with Etrangers a Nous-Memes

48 books update

I've finished three more books since I published my 2011 list:

45. Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro

46. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

47. Tales of a Female Nomad, Rita Golden Gelman

One more book to go!

Another reason why

2012 may be a year of major changes in my life. I'm planning a big move and hoping to take off in my stagnant career. Reading, I hope, will provide a constant in an ever-changing world, a safe base I can always return to whether my home is my parents' house or a studio in a new city. Whenever I feel out of control, past my limits, out of my comfort zone, I can always go home to books. They are always there to entertain, to provide a quiet solitary moment, a chance to think deeply, to feel without any real danger, to explore the world without leaving my room. Reading provides rhythm and consistency and a tie to my childhood, it keeps me whole, connects me to my core.

One of my only reservations in taking on this project is that reading too much will prevent me from stepping out of my box and seeking out authentic, visceral experiences of my own. However, I think that the more I read, the stronger I will be and the more I'll be able to accomplish in the real world. Another plus: the more time I spend reading books, the less time I'll spend mindlessly gazing at facebook photos.

If I do start to feel that books are consuming my life and I don't have time for friends and work and other hobbies, I'll drop my goal back to last year's: four books a month.

My Inspiration

Two years ago, an article about Nina Sankovitch, a woman who read a book a day for a year, inspired me to get reading again. One quote in particular resonated with me: “I’ve always thought great literature is all one needs to read to understand human psychology, emotions, even history. For someone sitting around reading books, it’s been a really lively year.” I might be off to a slow start, but I hope my 2012 is as lively as her year of reading a book a day.

Four Books One Month

For 2011, my first year with a reading goal, I aimed to read 48 books. I'd become so caught up in the Internet that I'd hardly read any real books in 2010. I missed reading and knew that it calms me down, makes me happy, and teaches me more than I'll ever learn from a blog post. I'd also begun to worry about the brain changes Nicholas Carr describes in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain. Although I can't argue that linear reading is superior to surfing the Web, I know intuitively that I enjoy it more. I don't want to be a person who doesn't read real books. I am afraid that if I replace chapters with blog postings, I'll lose the capacity to derive joy from getting absorbed in a good book. As 2011 draws to a close, I'm happy to say I now consider myself a "reader" once more.

I've been contemplating whether it's OK to read ahead a bit in 2011. After all, one goal of this project is just to read more books. Who really cares when exactly I read them? I propose that once I've finished my reading goal for 2011 (48 books), the remaining books I read this year can be placed in a reserve. That way, if I fall terribly behind or decide to read some VERY LONG BOOKS in 2012, I can still continue the project. War and Peace is on my to-read list, after all. I don't want to forego reading the classics just to reach a numeric goal. Quality counts, too!

The books I hope to read for the remainder of 2011 are:

- Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro

- Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire

- Paris Was Ours

- The Story of Beautiful Girl

- Freakonomics

- You Can't Go Home Again

I might have been the nerdiest first grader in history. On my class's weekly library trips, I checked out two books: one fiction, one non-fiction. Just for fun. Eventually I grew embarrassed that I was reading two books a week while the other kids were more into slap bracelets and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Though I continued to read, my discipline waned, reaching a low point in 2010 when I read fewer than 10 books. This blog is my effort to reinstate the reading habits of my six-year-old self.

The rules: I will read one fiction and one non-fiction book each week. If I fall behind, I can complete the book in a later week, as long as I read 104 books in the year.

The books: Anything goes! Judy Blume? A-OK. Proust? Sure! Steven Pinker? Might take more than a week.