Like a lot of people, I find the start of a new calendar year to be a useful demarcation for starting new projects. I am a great collector of books, but over the last couple of years, have not actually been a great READER of books.
However, I was recently inspired by Dave Fleet's post about how he read 26 books last year, one every two weeks.
Dave shares his crazy, easy system - the average book is about 280 pages. To finish a book in 2 weeks, you need to read 20 pages a day. Adjust accordingly.
I can do that.
I'm starting with The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel. I got this as a Solstice present from my brother-in-law. I forget who first recommended it to me, but I am super-excited to dive in. I've got a ridiculous list of more than 26 books I want to read - a combo of TED book club books (is there really no list of all the books that get sent as part of the TED book club?), stuff that looks good from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, occasional recommendations on BoingBoing and featured books on BrainPickings.
I'll publish my target list in the next day or so - at least the target for the first quarter, that's 6-7 books. I'm tracking my progress on a sidebar widget here on the blog. Plus I'm keeping a shelf on GoodReads for those of you who use it and want to connect there.
Photo Credit: reads by the sea by Joseph Robertson (I adore this photo)