Thursday, December 20, 2007

Mission Impossible - End of the Year Scramble - I Mean Challenge

Finals are over! Yay. I went right from my exam to my favorite stationary store (read, toy store) and Three Lives & Company - my favorite bookstore in New York City! Then I met Sheila at a great French-Moroccan cafe for appetizers and Rioja and great waterfalls of conversation which started before our coats are off (well, mine was off, actually) and when we split at the Times Square stop to catch our separate trains we are usually still shouting to each other as one of us is running to catch a train. Lovely evening.

Now comes the great countdown. I've read 40 books this year and I really (meaninglessly) want it to be 50. I'm not counting thousands of pages in articles and textbooks. So here's the plan although not necessarily in this order:

40. The Spoilt City - Olivia Manning (almost done)
41. Friends and Heroes - Olivia Manning (the conclusion of the trilogy)
42. The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick (it's a graphic novel, he-he)
43. Tell me Everything - Sarah Salway
44. Experiment in Love - Hillary Mantel
45. The Stolen Child - Keith Donohue
46. The Last Town on Earth - Thomas Mullen
47. Lisrael - Garth Nix
48. Abhorsen - Garth Nix
49. Across the Nightingale Floor - Lian Hearn
50. Musicophilia - Oliver Sacks

It's subject to last minute revisions. Think I can do it? Probably not if I keep on writing. Probably not at all, but I'm going to try. Want to join me? Consider this an unofficial, end of the year challenge. You have 12 days left to create a meaningless goal of your own - some number of pages or number of books for the year, or perhaps just to read something by Shakespeare, or one book you promised you would get to - make it whatever you want and join me in my last minute scramble to accomplish the impossible.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Begin with Hugo Cabret. It's what the young folk would call awesome and what I would call . . . awesome.

md

Ted said...

Mary - I believe I actually discovered it on your site! I couldn't remember where I had seen it! So thank you. And, yes, it is sitting right by my bed. Can't wait

Eva said...

Good luck! I loved The Stolen Child. :)

Sheila O'Malley said...

Ted - so much fun last night! I love your characterization of us saying goodbye at the subway stop - so true.

Finished my 51st book this morning!! One more to go to make my (also meaningless)goal.

Ted said...

Yay, Sheila - 1 more book to go for the meaningless goal!

Sheila O'Malley said...

I need to re-read "The Dead" tonight - and then I will have completed Dubliners. I am counting re-reads, which may be cheating but I re-read stuff so often I'M COUNTING IT.

My meaningless competition with myself continues!

You've made me want to read the Balkan Trilogy!