My Reading List

In 1994 I set a goal to read 1,000 books in 40 years. This excludes children's books or instruction manuals or travel guides or Penthouse Forum letter collections, which quite truthfully was an omission that will hurt my chances of success.

Since that time I've maintained a list, first on paper and then transferred to Excel, of all of the books I have read. By the end of this year I should be at 325 books to stay on pace; I'm currently at 293. I'll have to kick it into a higher gear at some point to catch up, but I'm scheduling some time in my mid-50s to do so. I'm a big believer in setting goals; this one gives me the most leeway and time to procrastinate of all of them.

I don't spend discretionary income on many things, leaving that task predominantly to my wife and children. However, I'm a sucker for books. My home office is lined with six bookshelves, and the shelves are slowly running out of space. My book collection will never rival that of my good friend Steve, whose house does not have an inner wall in any room aside from the bathroom or kitchen devoid of bookshelves. The point is, though, that I love purchasing books. I'd much rather own a book than borrow one or check one out of the library. There's a part of me that wants possession in the event I decide to re-read a particular book, or so I can have them available for my children to read as they grow older. Plus, I just like the way they look piled up on my shelves.

My book purchasing frequency outpaces my book reading frequency, however, so many of the volumes on my shelves have yet to be read. I just purchased another book today, which is one of at least 20 that I have to decide between as to which I am going to read next. Currently I'm about halfway through Tom Drury's The End of Vandalism, which is thoroughly enjoyable but which I'm progressing through slowly given that I seem to only have the hour between 10:30 and 11:30 p.m. available for free time these days, and instead I'm spending much of that time goofing around on the internet (posting on this blog, for one thing).

One problem I have is that I tend to get as interested in thinking about the next book I'm going to read as I do about the book I'm currently reading. It has to be some sort of illness, but it feels immensely pleasurable to read the last page of a book and immediately begin running through the list of contenders for Next Book (I actually think of it like that, in bold and capitalized). The difficulty currently for me is that I have so many books that are vying for the title of Next Book. That's why I've decided to list the viable contestants in this post, as a sort of guide for me in the hopes it may help me prioritize my reading list. It doesn't help me to realize that with a substantial list, at my reading pace that basically ties me up for the better part of a year. And yet I know without hesitation that I will be purchasing more books before year's end. No one ever knows what to get me for a gift, and I don't know either, so I always ask for a gift certificate to Amazon or B&N or Borders.

So, knowing that this list is in no sort of priority order (having listed them based on the order in which I notice them on the shelves), and that many will be replaced by others to be named later, and that some may never be read for that matter, and that I need to wrap this sentence up before drowning in commas, here is my current list of books I'm anxious to "get to reading":

1. A Confederacy of Dunces - Toole
2. Parasite Rex - Zimmer
3. Hare Brain Tortoise Mind - Claxton
4. J R - Gaddis
5. Magic Street - Card
6. I Am Charlotte Simmons - Wolfe
7. The Firm of the Future - Dunn and Baker
8. Encouraging the Heart - Kouzes and Posner
9. Managing the Professional Service Firm - Maister
10. Clients for Life - Sheth and Sobel
11. Uncoventional Success - A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment - Swensen
12. The Agressive Conservative Investor - Whitman and Shubik
13. Rule #1 - Town
14. The Mind of Bill James - Gray
15. Baseball Between the Numbers - Baseball Prospectus
16. New Shanghai - Yatsko
17. A People's History of the United States - Zinn
18. Revolutionary Wealth - Toffler and Toffler
19. Fast Food Nation - Schlosser
20. The Wisdom of Crowds - Surowiecki
21. Empires of the Word - Ostler
22. Coincidences, Chaos, and All That Math Jazz - Burger and Starbird
23. The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten - Baggini
24. NY Public Library's Books of the Century - Diefendorf
25. Boards That Deliver - Charan
26. China: The Balance Sheet - Center for Strategic and International Studies
27. Freedom Just Around the Corner - Mcdougall
28. Magician - Feist

Well, shit.

That's more than a year's worth of books right there. And it doesn't count all of the other books I haven't yet read that are on my shelves. Or Guns, Germs and Steel which I have 100 pages yet to read (and have had to read for about six weeks). Or the books on my Amazon wishlist. Or the few periodicals I subscribe to. Or the newspaper. Or current reading for my profession. Or. Or. Or. I should be a miner, extracting all this or.

Any suggestions on what to read next? What to ignore? If not, I'll just pick a Next Book that suits my mood at the time. One thing I sure as hell ain't reading: this post for typos.

Why Did I Create A Blog?

1. I have a lot on my mind and need a creative outlet.
2. My brother has a blog.
3. My father doesn't have one.
4. I love the written word...particularly when it's mine.
5. It's too difficult to use an ellipsis in speech.
6. I don't spend nearly enough time wasting away hours on the computer.
7. Just one more excuse to ignore the family.
8. The world is crying out for a hard-hitting liberal blog.
9. The world is yelping for a tough-as-nails, take no prisoners conservative blog.
10. I don't like message boards because people actually read what I write there.
11. I like posting links to unusual or funny sites that I think others might enjoy.
12. That's actually bullshit. I like posting links to unusual or funny sites that I think I might enjoy and likely will forget to bookmark.
13. I want a G-rated blog that my kids will enjoy reading.
14. Guess they're not reading #12.
15. I like making lists.
16. I'm vain.
17. Who doesn't appreciate puns?
18. I have something to write that no one has ever read before.
19. Not like I'm going to share it with you, though.
20. So that it finally can be said that creating a blog has officially jumped the shark.
21. I'm an attention-whore, who doesn't charge for services provided.
22. Why not?
23. Does it really matter when I love you so?
24. So my Mom has no excuse to say I don't talk with her often enough. Shhhh, as far as she knows, this is just for her...er, I mean you! Hi, Mom!
25. I'm out to prove that accountant /= boring...but reading a blog posted by one definitely is.
26. God, I love a well-placed ellipsis.
27. This is not...one.
28. A blog is more productive than viewing internet pornography. It's also the cause of many less virii.
29. I enjoy making lists, even of sometimes unrelated items.
30. Pretzels with cheese dip.
31. I just lost my train of thought. Mmmm, cheese dip.
32. Okay, so where were we? Oh yeah.
33. I want to win an internet award for world's best blog.
34. I mean, another one.
35. So I can give shout outs and mad props to my homies.
36. I can type 'homies' in two consecutive sentences and no one can do a thing about it because I control this blog!
37. I can't get banned from this place, unless I want to.
38. To post my innermost thoughts and feelings, because I really value what complete strangers on the internet have to say about them.
39. This reason for sale - inquire within.
40. This is a good place for me to post things happening in my life that my family can read about. Therefore, I shall save on phone bills, as well as being repetitive.
41. Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games and deserves my praise.
42. I want to discover the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.
43. So I can look busy at work.
44. Sometimes I have a good thought and go to write it down but then I realize that I don't have a sharp pencil or the pen I've been using is out of ink and I am about to forget what I was thinking about and please thought, don't leave me because it really was worthwhile and how in the hell could I have typed all of this on a single Post-It Note, anyway?
45. I want to post something in my life that ends up attributed to George Carlin, who will of course deny it on his website, at first, until he realizes the sheer brilliance of what I posted, at which time he will greedily claim it as his own and sue me for plagiarism.
46. I, of course, will wish to settle. I know some good lawyers at the OTBL boards.
47. I can make reference to things like 'OTBL' that many readers won't understand, and that makes me feel superior.
48. Isn't that all anyone really deserves? Superiority is highly under-rated.
49. I was going to think of 100 reasons but I'm running out of good ideas. That was evident around reason #17.
50. So that you would read it, and hopefully smile, laugh or think, at least once.

Welcome to my blog.