Electric Quaker II

Well it *could* be challenging…

So, aye, those of you with suspiciously good recollection of previous things I’ve done may now be smug and remember that, once, a long time ago, I was attempting NaNoWriMo 2005. That lasted about a week, and then I got a) bored and b) stressed out by housemates wankers.

Still, another year, another thing I can have a go at, and then forget about in the coming weeks (which, with Panto now sucking my every non-working waking moment down into a black hole of sleeplessness, shouldn’t be too hard) – there’s a thing in which you read 50 books in a year, and then tell people about it. That gives you a fortnight’s grace, I guess.

I figure, what the Hell. I used, back when I caught the rotten No. 83 to school each day, read much more than I do now, but since I’ve been working again, I now have to read in order to take my mind of how horribly strong I have to make my instant coffee if I hope to stay awake to the next break. So I’m racking up ninety-odd minutes of reading time each weekday, which might help.

I’ve not looked into it enough to be able to tell if there’s a set word limit each book needs to have, so I’m going to say I’m counting monographs, but not open serials, such as the Guide from the Saturday Grauniad, or Private Eye, or the xkcd alt-text. As an extra restriction, I’m not going to count monographs I come across whilst cataloguing ’em, because that would be a) rather implying I’ve got sufficient free time to loll about reading the stuff here at work – which I haven’t, and if I had such time I’d spend it sleeping, at the moment – and b) kinda cheating, especially since almost all the stuff I run into here isn’t stuff I’d normally pick to read. So deliberate stuff only, then.

To be fair, I’m not convinced this will be a “challenge” in the sense of “something which is challenging” – mean, come on, “Read slightly less than a book a week for the next 52 weeks!” is hardly up there with “row across the Atlantic,” or “Trek across the sahara desert in a camel costume,” or “go a whole day without a cup of tea or coffee,” is it? My interest lies not in reading slightly less than I’m normally likely to read, but in finding out how much more I read, now I’ve got more “free” time which I typically spend reading. I might, of course, get to December and think “O no! I’ve only read 37 books!” but that will be interesting, too.

I appreciate I’m starting a week late, so you get a bit of a lump summary of what I’ve clocked up so far…

1. Artemis Fowl
2. Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident
3. Eurekaaagh, compiled by Adam Hart-Davis

…I reckon that’s it so far, as I’m working my way through Spring of the Ram fairly slowly. I’ll tell yez when I’ve clocked it up. Or else get really bored o’ this and give up…