Reading Challenge

Okay, so there was a sale this weekend at a bookstore, and I went a little hog wild and bought 8 books (I told my hubby he should have came with me!) I've been bad, buying books when I have More than enough at home to read. I just can't help myself! I literally have 130 books on my Amazon wishlist... I know, it's a sickness. Logistically, also, it just doesn't make sense to buy more books. Any book lover knows, it's a pain in the ass to move with bunches of books! Those suckers are heavy!

Nonetheless, I found this challenge on Around the World in 100 Books and felt like it was literally speaking to me. So, I've resolved to buy no more books for the rest of the year (eek, I know it's only two months, but it seems so long!) and limit myself to a budget of $25 a month for books for next year, though I may wait to implement that after the move since we'll be tight for moolah in the mean time. Plus, soon I'll have college text books to buy again, ugh, I'm not looking forward to that!

I will devote myself to being happy with the books I have already purchased rather than continually looking forward to books I wish to purchase and will read books I already own. Wacky idea, isn't it?

I've also been slacking on reading in general just because of the business of applying to schools, selling cars, getting my house ready to sell, and other personal things that have popped up in my life distracting me from my reading (okay, fine, so television is the culprit part of the time!)

I'm going to set goals for the month of November:

• Finish Crime and Punishment finally! I've picked it up and laid it down a number of times, not for want of interest, but because it always happened that a book would take precedence over it such as I had to finish a book for a book club meeting, or I borrowed a friend's book so wanted to finish it to get it back to them, etc. I will finish it this month!
• Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. I've wanted to read this book for a while, but I finally just purchased it this weekend at the sale and I'd like to get it read before the third of next month for Simply Wait's the third day book club! This month they blogged about Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I also purchased this weekend. Since I just bought the book, I didn't participate in the third day book club this month, but am eager to next month. It sounds like such a delightful idea! I hope I already own the book that will be blogged about for January 3rd since I'm not allowed to buy anymore.
• Paint it Black by Janet Fitch. I've been dying to read her widely anticipated follow up to the amazing White Oleander since it has come out, but haven't had time yet. It took her 7 years to complete this one after the stress of the success of White Oleander hit her (damn you Oprah! Um, just kidding, please don't have me shot, Ms. Winfrey...)
  
• The Celestine Vision by James Redfield. It's okay if I don't finish this in November since it's more of a spiritual read and is more of a "read as you need" type of book, but I think I need some spiritual grounding so I'll be hitting it up this month for sure.
• The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner. I'm not too concerned about finishing this one either since I've read it before, but I'd like to dip into it to inspire me to get back on track with my writing again. I've been slacking on that as well.

That's about a book a week if you count my goal to read at least parts of The Celestine Vision and The Art of Fiction, so they can count as one book in that sense. Not an overly ambitious goal for me, but one that will hopefully keep me on track with my reading and keep me from slacking and vegging out in front of the TV.

I'll be traveling a lot next year in January and then March so I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done then and have already laid out themed stacks of books for the trips. My husband must think I'm nuts, but of course I have my African novels laid out for my trip to Uganda and my European based novels for my trip to Europe in March. I can't be the only one who does this!

Good reading and writing folks! Wish me luck on focusing and buckling down. There's something about the winter that makes me feel incredibly lazy and like all I want to do is lay under the covers and do nothing. I must have been a bear in my past life, because I sure would like to hibernate for the winter. Wouldn't that be wonderful?