Cannonball Read

I'm attempting to start anew here. This will be the home for my stab at Pajiba's Cannonball Read, and maybe other things (but not too likely).

What is the Cannonball Read? A bit over a year ago two of the members of the Pajiba community began a contest, a race of sorts: who could read more? The contest then was to read 100 books in 1 year. That's almost two books a week. There are only two general rules: 1) Books must be "of substance" to be counted - 150 is a decent minimum page count. No fair trying to claim Green Eggs and Ham as one of your books. 2) You must post a brief review of all books read, so that other participants know you actually read them, and also get great referrals on what they should read too. A small handful of people actually completed this feat. Well now there's a new race on, and while I'm too slow to be on the official contestant roster, I'm participating nonetheless. Officially, the race began on November 1, 2009, and ends on Halloween, 2010. This year, the coordinators went with the much more reasonable goal of 52 books in a year (that's 1 per week).

Back in the day, I worked a shitty office job. I rode the bus to and from work, and read the entire way, both ways, and on my lunch break. This amounted to roughly two hours of reading time a day, minimum. Back then, 52 books in a year was not only doable, but downright easy. I'm sure that back then I probably came closer to averaging 60-65 books a year.

But now it's different. I - thankfully - no longer work that job. I love my current job, but it affords no bus-time or easy lunch-time for reading. As such I've finished maybe 4 books this year. And therein lies my primary reason for joining the Cannonball Read: to force myself to start reading again.

Let's hope this works. Happy reading, one and all.