Many questions run through my head as the full moon approaches. First and foremost: "why do I feel the need to set myself these challenges?" David (my partner of 16+ years) is always pointing out that I have many projects, a multitude of tasks and a daily to-do list that never manages to get done even on a good day, so why suddently decide to add 100 books to my reading list?
To be honest, I'm not really sure is about the best answer I can come up with.
Maybe it is just so I have something to write about, although writing is always on my daily to-do list, so it probably has something to do with my childhood......?
Maybe it's because we own over 3,000 books and I would like to think that I have enough time left in my life to one day sit down and read all of the ones that I have not read yet, or at least not finished (there are many non-fiction titles that I have picked up, read the first few chapters and then quietly put in a box in the roof to finish off some other day). I'm currently 43 years old. Maybe I am trying to tell myself that if I can read 100 books in one year, and let's say I have approximately 2,000 books left to read, I can feasibly do this before I get to the age of 65. Maybe.
I love bookshops. I love books. I love to collect books. I don't necessarily have to read them all. It is similar to my cook book obsession, which I am blogging about here. Although cook books are like ideas journals - you don't have to read each one, you can browse through them and find items that currently appeal to you at that particular moment. In three years time you may go back to the same cook book and find a completely different you standing there browsing and selecting a totally different set of ingredients to cook with.
The more I try to find an answer to that initial question, the more I start to wonder why I chose THAT particualr list. I've done a basic google search and there are PLENTY of lists of the 100 best/most popular/most pretentious/most literary etc. I could have chosen a whole BUNCH of books to read. Instead I chose this one. Why?
That question is easier to answer. I remember joining a bookclub when I worked at Forsters Solicitors about five years ago and I really enjoyed the fact that somebody else apart from myself was choosing the titles for us to read. This bookclub was run by the head librarian. When I was about 13 and settling into High School I remember one of the librarians being quite concerned that I was slowly working my way through the Lord of the Rings. She wanted me to choose another book, any other book, provided that it was not of the fantasy genre. She litterally forced me to start reading things that I wouldn't normally read.
I'm extremely grateful to her for doing this. I started reading Historial fiction instead. Rosemary Sutcliffe to begin with but later many other authors. I'm currently re-reading Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy and am on the second and favourite book of the three, The Hollow Hills (US readers try here). I was kind of hoping to be able to finish the trilogy and read two other novels related to the trilogy prior to starting my "challenge" but maybe I won't have time after all.
You see, this is where the worry starts to creep in and attempts to get me to give up before I've even begun.... now that I have a large list of books to read I am immediately concerned that I may want to read other books... but surely I'll be able to fit in a couple of other titles here and there.....won't I?
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