Living for Disco

I have always wanted to be well read. I envy those people that seem to be able to pluck a quote or relevant literary reference out of the air. Admittedly these people are mostly characters in old films, who seem to have nothing better to do with their lives than gobble literature voraciously and absorb the life-lessons to be found therein. I keep meaning to read those books that you are supposed to read, but never really got round to it. For example, I had a doorstep sized copy of Don Quixote on my bedside table for two years, and meant to read it. It just always seemed to cumbersome, and there was always something else to read. Like ‘Undead and Unwed’, a trashy vampire comedy romance, that I worked my way through no less than six times in a year, with undiminished enjoyment.

It’s my birthday today, incidentally, and yesterday my best mate gave me a present. It’s a massive tome, entitled ’1001 books you must read before you die.’ This, coupled with my increasing desire to revisit the blog, gave me an idea for the project on which I am now embarking. I’m not the first person to do this, nor the first to blog about it I expect. However, I will be attempting to work my way through these books, and I will be documenting my progress (alongside other less cerebral commentary).

I’ve already read about 140 of them, and I won’t be rereading these books. It’s something I considered, but as Gordon said, I simply don’t have time. Even if I read 25 books a year I will be half-way through the project in approximately 20 years. It’s not the getting to the end that I am concerned with, however. It’s the journey. I’m going to be reading alot of books that I don’t like, I’m certain. The presence of Michel Houellebecq on the list has already caused me some emotional pain – you see, the rule is, if I’ve started a book but not finished it, I have to read it all the way through. I’m just interested in seeing where this takes me and what I learn. Hopefully some of you may be interested too.

So, there we are. I’m starting with The Book of Disquiet, seeing as I already own it. I bought it on a whim in Borders back in October, because it had a big sticker on it saying “The Greatest Book Ever Written”, or something equally hyperbolous, and I’d never heard of it. I’ll let you know how I get on.

By the way, you can find the list of books that I will be reading over there, on the right, under Bits and Pieces on th epage entitled 1001 Books. The ones I’ve read are in bold.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 11:47 am and is filed under 1001 books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.