A Book A Day for 365 Days

Of all the new year resolutions that I have made, one of the few that I have successfully kept is a pledge made back in 2000 to try and read at least one book a week for the entire year. I've since gone from that initial target of 52 books to setting myself a more ambitious one of 100 books for the year (just under 2 a week). All this pales in comparison though to the goal that Nina Sankovitch set herself - she wanted to finish a book a day for one entire year, and write a reflection on each and every one of them. She started on October 29, 2008 and she's almost done - having read through Christmas, New Year's and Easter. She started her one year of reading as a means of helping her come to terms with her sister's death and of course to appreciate more about herself and the world. Her reviews and thoughts on reading are real gems, which I encourage everyone to read.

I can't help but be moved and impressed by Nina's journey, and perhaps, one day I will find the courage and the time to do something similar. The depth and breadth of her reading was very impressive - she would not read anything she had already read before; she would read an individual author's work only once, and she would read widely - essays, short stories, science fiction and fantasy, crime, literary novels, the occasional classic. Of course, the fact that she had only a day to complete it meant that each book was usually limited to under 300 pages (with novellas for busy days).

It was flattering to see a number of books I've already read that she encountered for the first time during her one year journey. These included The Watchmen (she found it far too violent and didn't enjoy it), Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (we both loved it but as book lovers that was only to be expected), Ali Smith's The First Person and Other Stories (she found Smith's style irritating and distracting, I found it intriguing and fun), The 39 Steps (we both thought it farcical and not very exciting), and many others such as Ender's Game, Paul Auster's Man in the Dark, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (she found the ending too staged, I thought he had earned it), Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, The White Tiger, Never Let Me Go and Stardust by Neil Gaiman (we both wanted more of faerie).

Anyhow here's a salute to Nina once again, and I'll go back to her list and I'll sure be glad to find some interesting new reads that might help me fulfil my goal of reading 100 books next year.