Ambitions

Every now and then I'm reminded of how little I've actually read. I consider myself better-read than the next person, but I'm not privy to a wide variety of books. I read the assigned classics in school and have branched out a little from there. I'm lucky to have had professors and teachers who have required me to delve into unique and provocative novels and books of poetry. But overall, I find my repertoire lacking.

I came across TIME's All-Time 100 Novels from 1923 to the Present, and I was humbled by how many of these I haven't even heard of. Thus I am undertaking the entire list, or most of it. I'm excited for the possibilities of finding another author to obsess over. Because that's how it happens. You, by chance, become engrossed with a writer's work (usually because somebody suggested one of their books), blow through their whole collection, then move onto the writers they like, and it sort of snowballs, until eventually the snowball melts. My snowball has melted. And even though I've tacked on quite a few books to my "have-read" list, they're all fairly similar. Because writers mimic (for the most part) writers they admire and so on and so forth. But this list will give me guidance, focus, and variety in the books I read.

So first up on my list: Under the Net by Iris Murdoch, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (which isn't actually on the list).

I challenge all of you lovely (well-read) people to read even more. You can never read too much, I think. Plus, it keeps you from doing stuff that you really should do but just don't wanna. All for the sake of expanding the mind, right? Er, okay, maybe I should get back to work.