The Beginning. Again.

So in April of 2010, I realized that I had already read 35 books that year. Which for four months into the year, is pretty impressive. Especially considering that was my second-to-last semester of undergrad. I decided that in addition to my 365 Portrait Project, I was going to try and read 100 books by December 31st, 2010.

I kept reading at a pretty decent clip throughout the summer. By August 15th, when I went back to school, I had read 55 books. Which was a little behind, numbers-wise, but I thought I could do it. But then it was my last semester of undergrad, and I had to write my senior thesis (which ended up being 140 pages long) so, understandably, I got a little distracted and knew I couldn't make my goal. Plus, I was still having to keep up with my 365 Project as well. I had a lot on my plate.

But now it's 2011. My 365 Project is over (and finished with flying colors). I finished my undergraduate degree last month. I am ready for a new project--well, new in the sense that it is my official focus of this year to read 100 books by December 31st.

It's going to be a trip, that much I know. And I wasn't planning to keep a blog, but in going over my 365 project from last year, I liked the blogging element I added into it. So I'm going to try this blog thing out and see how it goes. Don't fear. I have a B.A. in English. I am a trained professional at this writing thing. Either that or I wasted $80,000 on that degree.

The rules:
Complete 100 books by December 31st.
The books must exceed 150 pages in length.
Manga is not included in the book count.

Other than that, any book is free game. Re-reads are all good (and apparently, re-reading books isn't as common as I think it is? Post on that sometime later). And yes, even JF and YA. I'm not fond of book challenges that exclude these two genres and dismiss them as some sort of paraliterature. If not for these two genres, though, we would never have become voracious readers as children and in turn, voracious readers as adults. And sometimes, you just have to return to your roots. So yes, there will probably be more than a fair share of YA/JF represented in these 100 books.

I'm not keeping a strict to-read list. I have a shortish list of books that I want to read (or books that I'm waiting to come out, like Bumped and Goliath), but I don't really hold myself to any sort of organized list. My reading habits are very mood dependent. I can't keep a pile of books by my bed, hoping that'll force me to read them, because it's very possible that I could not be in the mood to read those books for months on end. Sad but true.

And then, of course, there's the bad book cleanse. Which I'll talk about later.

So what's this blog for? I'm not going to be posting about every book I read. That's a lot of books. And sometimes I won't have anything particularly interesting to say about a book, especially if it's one of my habitual re-reads. And it's not just about books. It'll be about reading habits, libraries, anything book related. So I guess this is kind of a general book blog with the undercurrent of this 100 books-in-a-year thing.

So that's what it's all about, I guess. Welcome to the year of 20,000 pages.