ReadingPlanUpdate

My ReadingPlan started as the beginnings of a list of a thousand books I plan to read before I die.

I'm 45 as of 2010. If I live to be 80, reading one book per week, I can read about 1,820 more books. My library already has many more than that. Better get picky. (Of course, I've already read many of the books in my library.)

Some of these items are in fact multiple books, such as The Thousand and One Nights and Sherlock Holmes. I will break those out individually in the list, eventually. Others are long, such as Ulysses and the Bible, but I've already calculated above I have time for about 1800, so I have a bit of margin. Of course, if I get hit by the proverbial truck tomorrow, I'm not going to make anything near my 1800.

Obviously, worthy books will continue to be written and published. I've decided I'm going to start with about 100, and then see where those take me. It will probably take more than my usual two years just to get through that hundred.

Project update after about a year (3 Oct 2011):

Summary: I need not read every book on my list, but at least half the books I read must come from it.

I am also going to delete the books I have read from the list, as it seems unnecessary to track them twice.

29 Oct 2011: I am no longer going to aim for 1000 books, either. Among other reasons, I delete them as I read them, so that would be hard to track. At this point, I would be happy to finish even the 172 books (and counting) that are presently listed, because (I think) many are damned interesting and damned hard.

See also the ReadingCourses page.