New year resolutions are a joke. I think that is why they are broken so easily. Not everyone has the tenacity to keep up year round on what they decide to do at the beginning of the year. I think one factor is that resolutions aren't specific enough. Some people want to lose weight over the course of the year, but does weighing 210 pounds in January and weighing 208 pounds at the end of December constitute a completion of a weight lose resolution? When people talk about losing weight, they don't target two pounds as a goal. What about exercising more? If you didn't work out at all the previous year, going to the gym once fulfills the resolution. For every failure there are successes too, don't get me wrong, but if you talk to people in June about how they are doing on their resolutions, how many of them just flat out laugh about it?
This year, I want to read a bunch of books, and by a bunch I mean a handful. I'm okay with the fact that I am a slow reader, but I have picked out six books I want to read over the course of the year. Six books doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a good goal for me.
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
- Tell All
- Damned
- A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas from 1492 to Present
- Suttree
- Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Again, six books doesn't sound like a lot, but there are three history books on this list and are heavy reading. I've started with Guns, Germs, and Steel and cheated a little bit because I started this book in December. Now, let's talk strategy. What is the easiest way to get through this list (no, reading faster is not the answer). Is it read all the history books first and blast through the novels or vice versa? Or alternate between the novels and history books? Or some other pattern. I think that going with two history books followed by the three novels and finishing off the year with the last history book is the way to go.
So it begins. *Dramatic movie music*
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