Well, I've finally just finished the last pages of "The Hobbit".
That's the last book that I'll have finished reading this year. And, of course, I'm ridiculously far away from my goal of one hundred books.
To recount, these are all the books that I've read this year:
1. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire (completed 28th January)
2. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (compiled in one book), by Lewis Carroll (completed: 16th January)
3. After the Quake, by Murakami Haruki (completed: 12th February)
4. I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore (completed: 16th February)
5. The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (completed: 18th April)
6. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, by Tsutsui Yasutaka (completed: 28th April)
7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick (completed: 19th May)
8. Plainsong, by Hosaka Kazushi (completed: 2nd June)
9. The Grass is Singing, by Doris Lessing (completed: 31st July)
10. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (completed: 16th June)
11. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (completed: 18th June)
12. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins (completed: 23rd June)
13. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes (completed: 9th Nov)
14. The Good Terrorist, by Doris Lessing (completed: 12th Dec)
15. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (completed: 31st Dec)
The idea that I've only read 15 books the whole year (in 12 months! 52 weeks! Three hundred and sixty-five days!) is quite depressing to me. But then I kinda console myself with the knowledge that I've actually been doing a LOT more reading on my computer instead - fanfiction and whatnot.
Someone asked me once how much I fanfiction I do read. And then I realised that at almost any one point in time, I have about ten tabs open in my Firefox; ten stories - many of them likely to be multi-chaptered, and not one-shots - all at various stages of reading. And for some reason, while reading, I just *have* to skip back and forth between them. I dunno why, I just click and read through one for a while, then maybe it gets to a lull or something and I read another story for a while, and then maybe I'll jump to something else, or I'll go back to the story that I was reading earlier. I've no idea why I do this, honestly.
And then he asked, "You mean you can keep track of ten different stories at the same time??"
Yes... it isn't that difficult really. And there're my books too, in addition to stuff I read online.
As I've already mentioned before, I read two books at a time: one I keep with me for when I'm out and about, and one stays by the bed at night for bedtime reading.
And actually, if I happen to get a new book or something that I just have to start reading, that might become a third book that I'd be reading at the same time as well.
His mind was just boggled even further. Poor guy.
So, I wonder, does the sum total of all that I've read (in print and in type) amount to about 100 books? I wonder.
But I remember when I used to read a lot more. Books, that is. When I used to be what you'd call "a voracious reader".
When I was in secondary school and JC, I read in bed into the wee hours of the morning - I had to be scolded to put the book down and go to sleep. I read in between class periods, I read during recess sometimes, I read while walking to the bus interchange after school, I read on the bus, I read while walking home.
I used to read so much more. And it all tapered off in uni, when class readings took up all the time, and I just got so tired of reading stuff that was on paper, I think. Reading *books* dropped to a lifetime low when I was in uni.
I miss the me that loved books so much.
Let's see how far we manage to get through one hundred books in the new year. :)
But for now, I have another project to take me through to the new year. More details in my next post! :)