Friday, January 09, 2009

23 pounds and 49 books

I'm still seeking some proper goals for this year, but for the moment I do have two that will suffice for the moment.

The week of Christmas and New Year is always a bad time for diets. I decided to take the dangerous and unwise step of simply coming off the diet for that time, with a view to resuming it this week on returning to work. The danger there being, of course, that it's very easy to restart a diet 'tomorrow'.

As it happened, I did restart the diet on Monday, then dropped off it again for two days, and then resumed once more on Thursday. Hopefully, it will hold reasonably well for the next few months. My target, as before, is 184 pounds, which represents a drop of 23 pounds from this morning's weigh-in.

The other goal on my list is to read more. And since goals must have targets, the target is a mighty 52 books in the year, or an average of one per week. A 'book' will be defined as being the contents of one set of covers. So, a 150-page novella will count as one, as would "Lord of the Rings". A short story collection will count as one, as would the collected works of Shakespeare. However, quality will not be a factor. Neither graphic novels nor magazines will count, but since I don't actually read either of these, this is a non-issue. Oh, and the paper doesn't count either, and neither does anything online.

Oh, yes, and the measure will be books finished. Which means that both the book I was reading on December 31st (which I finished early on the 1st) and "Twenty Years After" (which I'm about 250 pages into, and have been for some time) will count, while any books that I abandon will not count, and neither will the books I carry over to 2010.

In order to track my progress, I'll be providing a numbered list of books on this blog as I read them. The first three entries can be found at the bottom of this post. However, I won't be offering any sort of a review of the books. Partly, this is pure laziness on my part. Partly it's because I wouldn't be reading the books if I didn't think they'd be good. And partly it's that if I committed to doing reviews I would never be able to keep to the 52 book target.

So, that's enough for now. I'm off to do a bit of light reading.

#1: "Excelsior: Forged in Fire", by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels
#2: "Moonraker", by Ian Fleming
#3: "How to Fossilise Your Hampster", by Mick O'Hare

1 comment:

Kezzie said...

Oh I am SOOO going to do that! What a good idea! I want to keep a list of what I have read, as I am aware I read prolifically but as to quality and quantity, the hard facts are hazy.