A new endeavor

My friend (and former boss) Athena tipped me off to this blog post by Julien Smith; it’s about how he triumphantly read 52 books in 52 weeks and how:

It feels awesome. It gives you an amazing amount of ideas. It helps you think more thoroughly. It’s better than TV and even the internet. It makes you understand the world more. It is a building block towards a habit of completion. Did I mention it feels awesome?

She’s trying to follow in his footsteps and I thought I might try, too. After all, I did read 60 books one summer vacation. How hard could it be to do it over four times the amount of time?

The first book I’ve finished as part of this project is Brooklyn: A Novel, by Colm Toiban. This was a short, sad little book, about a woman who moves from a small town in Ireland post WWII to Brooklyn to work in a department store. In some ways, I liked the smallness of it. The last book I read, Alive in Necropolis, was all big actions, fantasy, and bravado. This book celebrated (and sometimes mourned), the smallness of our individual lives. I enjoyed reading it, however. Toiban has a thoughtful style of writing, that while simplistic, is never simple (does that make sense??).

I’m going to try and log mini reviews of the books I read here, both for record and to make myself somewhat accountable. I may not hit 52, but I’m sure when 2011, comes around, whatever number I’m at, I’ll be better off because of it.