It seemed like a slightly manic goal when I set it back in July of last year, but my question to read 104 books in the space of a year may actually work out. I finished Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own this morning, which brought my reading total up to 74 books, then put together the final thirty books I’m planning on finishing between now and July 31st. They now live on my bedside table, a pile of words that can be beaten down day by day until I finally clear the whole damn thing.
To make the goal I need to clear three books off this pile a week, which is a little less daunting than it should be because of my bad habit of reading half a book and getting distracted (and cherry picking stories out of anthologies and collections). There’s a lot of bookmarks already in that pile, which should cut the reading time down a little.
Course, after I finish this pile, I have to tackle the to-read bookshelf I’ve set aside for the next eighteen months.
I really do need to declare a moratorium on new books at some point, especially since there’s a whole ‘nother bookshelf of unread books in the back of my wardrobe (right about the point where Narnia should be). Admittedly, *that* shelf is stuffed to the gills with stuff that’ll probably go in the next book cull, but it seems like cheating to take things off the list by throwing them out.
For those who may be wondering, allow me to clarify what exactly it is you’re looking at in the accompanying photograph. That, my dear peeps, is a photograph of victory in action. Or a pile of 205 books that are ready to leave my house forever and never return, thus clearing shelf-space and giving me tacit permission to buy new books should I ever find myself in possession of discretionary cash ever gain.