The Underminer!

I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to achieving Book Shelf Zero. I have acquired 8 books over the last few days. I ordered 4 from Thriftbooks and traded some books I had in my office and on the shelves at home to get store credit at 2nd and Charles. I used that store credit to buy 4 books. At least I bought books that further my already established reading goals. I have the next Drizzt trilogy line up (1 ebook, 2 print). I bought a Roth book (a fairly skinny one), and a ML Top 100 book (The Naked and the Damned). Duman Malone volume 3 (I'm pretty sure I have packed volume 2 but I won't be sure until I load the shelves in Clearwater). I even picked up a book from the Contemporary List, Volume 1 of My Struggle. I tell myself I did well by keeping my purchases in line with my reading goals, but I'm still adding more to the pile faster than I am making the pile smaller.

I did make the pile smaller by removing some books that I decided I didn't want to read. I removed a book on leadership, it was one of the books from my almost empty office, and a Sci-fi book that I bought used ages ago. It was long and I had no interest in it at this point. So I added 8 but removed 2. My book count stands at 166. And I wanted to get below 140 this year. I guess I should be getting busy.

Just over 300 days

I finished reading a skinny, easy to read book tonight. I packed a box of thick, challenging books to take with me to Florida. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is something I saw on bookstore shelves for years. I was never really intrigued enough to buy it, but when I saw it on a list of important books from the 90s I decided to see if the library had it. They did, I put a hold, it was available pretty quickly, and I read it pretty quickly. It was so cliche and obvious. Every teen after school special was in it. All the significiers of interesting and unconventional people were there. It wasn't bad. It was just flat. Maybe I'm just the wrong audience. It's hard to relate to a teenager when you're in your 40s.

The books I packed up were the opposite of Wallflower. They were all thick and dense. These are my aspirational books. They are the things I would like to be reading. If I'm ever going to read some of these things before I'm retired, this will be the time. What else am I going to do? I will avoid putting games on my phone. I've never been able to just sit and watch sports. I can't gamble on my phone in Florida so I won't have a financial interest in the games. That will leave plenty of time for distraction free reading. This could be my chance to see if I can read the really dense stuff that I buy because it's something I want to read someday. War and Peace, The Magic Mountain, some very heavy history books. James and Balzac. I don't need to read all of them. It would be nice to make it through a handful of them. 

I have just over 300 days until my family will be joining me in Florida. That's about 40 books if I average 1 a week. I've probably packed about 60 to 70 books. THrow in what I have on my phone and I will have 100 books to choose from. I will definitely not read them all, but I can make a pretty decent dent.  

A New Reading Project is Born!

I packed up some of my unread books for my year of (partial) isolation. Another group of books to read, another reading project is born! At first I thought listing all of these books and checking them off would be the challenge, but now I think it's just the books read while I'm living alone in this apartment. This could be my chance to be a little more intentional. This could be the time to take in the big serious books that I've had for years. more focused and intentional reading will give me some direction and purpose. I will start a Goodreads shelf. Alta Clearwater.

I actually toured the apartment this week. It feels real now. Moving was still an abstract idea in my previous post. I'm not as worried about low mental energies now. I will be very surprised if my new job is as taxing as my current one. I won't be dealing with a massive organization that can't get out of its own way. I should be able to take on big fat books.

I managed to finish a book this week. I got to the end of The Heart of the Matter on the plane ride home. It was decent but not as good as other books on the Modern Library 100. The religious aspects of the character's motivation felt out of place. The attitude toward the native Africans is widely out of sync with current sensibilities, which is a plus. I should change my 3 stars to 5 just to give it a boost to keep this problematic book on the radar. This is the 51st book of the Modern Library 100 that I have read. (3 more needed to complete a New Year's Resolution.)

I'm very close to finishing a library book. More on that when I get it wrapped up. A bit under an hour left according to the Kindle app.

Still exploring reading projects

The resignation email has been sent, and I'm getting more acclimated to the idea that I will be living in Florida. I'm getting excited about it now. My trip next week will be the first time that I really get to look around. This is a big step. Planning the ways that I will fill my time remains a big priority. Exploring the possibilities makes this time feel a bit less scary so it's an exercise worth pursuing even if several of the projects never come to fruition. 

I tried one of the Alexa Codex books after checking it out from the library. I like how it feels. I picked up the first book in the series at B&N on my way home from picking up my new car. (Total aside, I've been coasting for months and months. I should have bought a new car months ago. The direction and energy that step has brought is very surprising). (Second aside, I'm pretty deep into the beer tonight so this post may be a bit wonky from a structure perspective. My apologies.) I've been into 90s nostalgia recently. I found a podcast about songs of the 90s (60 songs to explain the 90s), I've been watching The Darkside of the 90s with T, and I've been digging into Radiohead. Is there a good list of essential books from the 90s? Yes, there are actually several. I haven't found one that really resonates with me though. Roth's books are part of several lists so I could pursue that project. Wikipedia lists 29 books (according to my slightly drunk count). I have read 2 of them according to my Goodreads list. I may have read The Ghost Writer and Goodbye, Columbus, but I am not 100% certain of that. There are other reading projects that are more pressing and where I already own the books, but I am intrigued. 

Looking over some of the lists reminded me of several books that I saw on the shelves while I was in mall bookstores in the 90s. The English Patient was very big during that time. I checked that out from the library once but didn't really get very deep. Infinite Jest is a big 90s book. I own it. I suspect I will never read it (this is the kind of reading project I should be pursuing). The Perks of being a Wallflower is something that always caught my eye but I have never actually considered reading. Don Delillo's Underworld is another prominent 90s book that I own and have never read. I've read lots of Cormac McCartney but I"ve never read All the Pretty Horses. I saw the trilogy for sale once but talked myself out of getting it (maybe it was a print book with all three novels, not sure). There are some good possibilities here. I may have to make my own list and add that to my many reading projects. Maybe I'll actually complete one some day!

I'm going to add a few of these to my Thriftbooks cart. That may be the first thing that gets ordered to my new apartment...