Book Lists

I seem to be one of the only people I know who doesn't have a list of books he's supposed to be reading. Sure, I'm like most people I know and I have a stack of "to-be-read" books, but I don't have an actual list.

But I'm finding, more and more, that people are doing these odd "book challenges" that they've received.

They seem to be pretty arbitrary, in a "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" sort of way. A list that some random person created, that everyone else is trying to follow.

There are things like: one novel, one book of short stories, one book your mother likes, one book you would be embarrassed to admit to reading...

And one friend of mine just started trying to do "one book per state" - which we decided was much easier when we started including "written about," "written in," and "the author lived for a long time in." (That last one got us Florida by way of Hemingway.)

Now, I really like to read. I don't do it as much as I used to now that I'm editing full time, but I do - mostly - like it. That's why I joined a book club a while back. And we read a lot of incredibly eclectic stuff. Mainly it's a lot of contemporary stuff, but this time we're actually reading Dickens' final (unfinished) book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Part of the fun of our meetings is the point when we start trying to figure out what to read for the next time.

A lot of people would probably say we ought to try a list. But I can almost guarantee I'd lose it before I used it.