I'm Rusty.

That's what I've learned about myself in 2012: I'm rusty in virtually every area of my life. Spiritually (I hadn't gone to church since Christmas, y'all, when I used to go every week and be actively involved), socially (I've been in Boston 2 years now and still barely have any friends), physically (thank you, YMCA gym membership, for illustrating so vividly how much a single 50-minute Zumba class can kick my behind), creatively (I haven't made a shred of headway in any of the 3 novels I started outlining last NOVEMBER) and... mentally. I'm pitifully behind in my reading. In fact, I haven't actually finished any books. I've started about 5 of them, but I haven't finished any of them. I KNOW, I KNOW. After all this fuss and I still haven't read any of them?

It's true. Part of the "problem" (disclaimer: not a real problem) is that my job has given me a promotion and a raise and it's just sort of avalanched. And that Queen Elizabeth biography, which ended up being not thaaaaaat bad, really did a lot to discourage me from my disciplined determination to read an hour a day; I just didn't want to read an hour of that for a week straight. Another part of the problem is that since I've been in total survival mode since I moved to Boston 2 years ago and things really only started settling down in the last few months, in a very different lifestyle than I was used to before, I think I've lost all touch with what's normal for me. How much should I be exercising? How much can I read in one day? How much time for church and spiritual life can I make? How do you even meet people in a new city when you work from home, anyway? And, hey, how come my "sexy" jeans have, uhhh, shrunk so much?

I've been slowly answering all these questions. I've joined MyFitnessPal and started actually using my YMCA gym membership; also signed up for rock climbing lessons and started looking into horseback riding in the area. I've started getting to bed on a regular schedule, even if it is crazy because I work the overnight shift. Going to church and getting involved - even taking the new member class to become an official member. Paying attention to the meetup groups I like in the area and going to more of those, even made a couple of friends! I gave up Fiverr since it took over my life with not enough payoff. And so on and so forth. I haven't been writing, but - baby steps, right?

Oh, yeah, and I've been reading more.

Realistically, though. I've figured out that, on average, it takes me about 2 minutes to read one page. I'm not good at skimming and sometimes I like to highlight and quote things on my Kindle. So, realistically, I can read about 30 pages a day, 45 TOPS, especially if it's engrossing. Realistically, this means I should have scheduled the Elizabeth biography over 2 or 3 weeks, not 1; realistically, this means that any book that has more than 300 pages or so, I'm going to need more than a week to get through.

Sooo I've decided that I'm going to do 26 books this year and 26 books next year. I'm wrapping up 3 this week (I've been reading them concurrently as the mood struck): finishing the Elizabeth biography tonight, and about halfway through both Dreaming in Cuban and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, both of which I'm enjoying much more. After that, I'm going to tackle Iceland's Independent People. Coming in just under 470 pages, it's going to take me 2 weeks to finish.

And that is okay. :)

My 2012 Reading Challenge Resolution: Around the World in 52 Books

In 2011, I got a Kindle, and as a result, I read nearly 2 dozen books. That's not a lot - I have friends who have read 3 times that many books this year, and more - but I work 50+ hours a week and for several years I haven't made a lot of time in my schedule for reading, so for me, it was a lot. Now that I've gotten into the somewhat regular habit of reading daily or nearly daily, I wanted to organize my reading efforts and become even more well-read this year, as well as increase the number of books I read from the year prior, and simultaneously learn a lot more about world history and current events.

The Around the World in 52 Books Challenge

Using my GoodReads account, I stumbled across a reading challenge called Around the World in 52 Books. The idea is that you read approximately one book per week, and each book must be set in a different country. The books can be set in the past, present or future; they can be of any genre (and, indeed, I have everything from non-fiction, to romance, to mystery, to historical fiction, to sci-fi in mine). Dozens of people have shared their reading lists, and GoodReads made it easy for me to find books tagged with specific countries as settings.

Criteria for Book Choices

I researched several books for each country, and read many book lists for many different countries of origin. For non-European books and cultures, I tried to avoid choosing books that were told from the point of view of a European visitor or outsider, i.e., no Out of Africa for Kenya, no Mosquito Coast for Belize, etc., with a few hopefully notable exceptions. For example, Egypt's book is the first of a series of plucky female European heroine mysteries. I happen to like mystery series with female protagonists, and this particular book was said by reviewers to include a lot of accurate detail about Egyptian history. Likewise, the book for Afghanistan is about a failed US mission in the war in Afghanistan. I chose it because it came highly recommended, was about current events, and presents a diverse array of local people on both sides of the war. Finally, I chose between books on the basis of genre-diversity, plot appeal and reviews from other GoodReads users.

Keeping Track of My Reading


I'm keeping track of my reading in several ways.

First, I have put all these books on their own shelf (category) on my account on GoodReads, which is a social network for bookworms.  I have many of these books already, and will try to read only one book per week. Some of these are quite short and some, like Russka, will likely take longer than a week to read, so I don't anticipate keeping to a very strict schedule, but the general goal is to average one book per week. Secondly, I'm keeping a travel map of all the countries I've "visited" in my reading using the mapping feature of TravellersPoint. You can see my bookshelf and my map with the details of the places I'm reading about and my "trip trajectory" on the 2012 Reading Challenge page on this blog. Pretty cool!

My Personal List


Below is the list I put together for myself. As you can see, Europe is slightly over-represented at this time. So I may tweak it a bit as time goes on and my interests shift.  This is just my own personal list, not intended to be definitive in any way. If this challenge sounds interesting to you, I recommend looking through the book challenge message board where people in the ATW52 challenge have posted literally dozens of lists.

Are you doing any reading challenges right now? Be sure to tell me about them in the comments!