350 Book Reading Challenge
My Seven-Year Commitment To Personal Growth
Inspiration
Reading is a practice that keeps the imagination alive. Early exposure to the classics in high school, and then again in college left me with a desire to become a more educated reader. I wanted to read books for more than their plots and characters; to absorb their contemporary influence, to understand how authors influence each other through history, and to become a more global citizen through a more comprehensive understanding of the total literary picture.
With that, I wanted to taste the foods, feel the fabrics, hear the music, and connect what I’ve read about the great experience of being alive. I set a goal to read as many of the books I’d wanted to learn about once I became an empty-nester. With most grand plans there are obstacles. As a small business owner and mother of two young men, free time is limited. I’m not a terribly fast reader. I have other hobbies and interests. As the challenges stacked up this whole idea seemed more and more ridiculous. I resolved to work on the issues one way or another and just start reading but I needed a goal and structure to make it stick. That’s where this blog begins.
Title Selection
January 2016 was spent pouring over books lists on the Internet. Amazon lists, GoodReads.com lists, publishers’ lists, scholarly lists, appendices, and even old reading lists from school were all manually transcribed into one master spreadsheet. I searched for duplicates and ranked them based on popular consensus which resulted in about the first 200 titles. I broke the remaining titles down into subcategories (fiction, non-fiction, biographies, bestsellers, world literature, pop culture, etc.) and selected a dozen or so from each. I added twenty books that my closest friends said were their favorites. I left 30 spots open for wildcards and current best sellers. Bam! My 350 Book Reading List was defined. The books were alphabetized in my spreadsheet and assigned a number from 1 to 350. I then went to work collecting publication dates, page counts, abstracts for each title.
Reading Goal
I’m a big believer in the “20 Mile March Philosophy” (I’ll write a post about that soon) so my first step was to set a realistic pace to hold myself to and a firm end date to finish all 350 titles. My 50th birthday will be in July 2023. What a gift to myself to have accomplished this project by then! So, I had an end date. Backing into that meant that I had to read a book every eight days for the next 7+ years. Ummm…who am I kidding?! Could I really do this? But I knew it could be done with some small lifestyle changes. First, I’d get up an hour earlier every day possible. Next, I’d be mindful of the one-to-two hours I was wasting surfing online, playing on my phone, or watching TV daily and take that back for myself. That’s two+ hours a day or fourteen+ hours a week I just found! Okay, I can do this. I can read an average book in 8 days for sure. The epics will take longer; the short stories just a few hours. In the end, it would all even out.
The End Goal
To be completely forthcoming I’m not sure what to expect from this undertaking. Will I earn a more enlightened view of the world’s cultures? That’s the hope! May I simply get a few more answers correct in the literature categories on “Jeopardy!”, quite possibly. If absolutely no cultural knowledge is gained through this endeavor will not be for naught. I will have practiced discipline–daily and methodically–for over seven years toward a singular goal that was a gift for myself. When August 2023 rolls around I can start the next decade of my life with the opportunity to consider another grand pursuit with the foresight of knowing that I can indeed dream big with confidence.