I Read Books... Sometimes

So I was over on my brother-in-law Scott's blog yesterday and he was talking about all the books he'd read over 2009. He'd "only" hit 44 (which he said was low in comparison to George W. Bush and I thought was incredibly high). I began to wonder how many books I'd read and knew it was no where near 44. Seth said I'd probably be surprised and that I'd be up around 20. No way. I said I'd be lucky if I could find 10. Sadly, I was right. Sort of. I was able to name 9 books I'd read all the way through. If you count the 450 pages I read of War and Peace, you can round that out to 10 books. Here's the list in no particular order: (Um, Scott, I'm going to rip off your rating system *Ok **Good ***Great)

***Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

***Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders by John Gierach

**Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

*A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

**The Call of the Wild by Jack London

**The Little Lame Prince by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

**White Fang by Jack London

***The River Why by David James Duncan

**Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese by Brad Kessler

:-P (That's the sign for BORING) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Now, to be fair, during the time I was reading War and Peace, it was the only book I read. I could not get into it and found it incredibly boring. For the most part, instead of supplementing my reading with something else, I slowly chugged through it... usually at less than 1 chapter a day. So those several months were unusually low in books. 450 pages of War and Peace is easily equal to like 2000+ pages of a normal book. So there... I'm not illiterate.

Although, Scott did light a fire in my belly so to say. I really could read a lot more than I did last year. So, I'm going to set a GOAL. That's right... Me, the hater of goals, is making one right now. By this time next year I want to have read at least 30 books. I know, this number may be low for some, but that's at least a couple of books a month. That's quite a bit for me and I think it'll be pretty challenging.

Eat, Pray, Love

I don't normally do book reviews. I don't know why. People always talk about reading books that they can't put down. I've read several of these kind of books and I'm never as impressed as everyone else is. Maybe I have unreasonable standards.

For Christmas 2007 (yes a year ago), my sister Annie gave me the book "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. I had actually almost bought the book myself and so I was looking forward to reading it. Fast forward more than a year later to when I actually got around to reading it. I honestly could not put this book down. I lost at least an hour of sleep every night because I stayed up reading. I read on lunch breaks. I read as soon as I got off work. I read whenever I could. I'm not that fast of a reader so it took me about two weeks to finish, but that's pretty good for me.

This is a non-fiction book about the author who goes on a journey to three different places: Italy, India, and Indonesia. Her purpose is to basically find herself and get over some of the trials she's been through. Kind of a spiritual journey. I think I could relate to a lot of the things she'd been through which probably made it even better for me. Her journey was very interesting and she was very likable and funny.

Anyway, I highly recommend it and thanks again Annie for picking out a winner for me!