Who doesn’t love a challenge?

Me! That’s who! Actually, I’m kidding. I think of myself as a very non-competitive person.

This idea of a non-competitive nature that I’ve created for myself, however, is based in two things:  I do not like to play competitive physical sports, and I get very annoyed with people who get competitive in educational or work environments.  Rather, I hate the idea of being competitive against other people.  But! I can get pretty competitive with myself.  I’ll often challenge myself to a challenge; perhaps something like, “hey! self! I challenge you to watch all seven seasons of Buffy in 3 months.” Sometimes I stick with it, sometimes I don’t. Let’s go ahead and say that the Buffy example is not a hypothetical, and since I’m doing so swimmingly at it, I’ve decided to challenge myself to some other stuff as well. This new challenge will be a sports game for the mind played against the self, if you will.

Elizabeth posted this a few days ago, and I thought about how I’d recently  considered beginning some sort of regimented reading thing. The nice thing about 12 books in 12 months is that other people are doing it. And while I won’t be competing against these people to finish books, I will be (at least somewhat) held accountable by these people to Read Books. It’s also nice that I’ll be attempting to read books that have been sitting around my house waiting to be read (Okay, I do kind of want to buy/check out two books. We’ll see).

My 12 books shall be these, and I reserve the right to make changes. No one is going to stop me.

1. Tom Robbins – Half Asleep in Frog’s Pajamas (I’ve only read Still Life, and I loved it).
2. JD Salinger – Franny and Zooey
3. Neil deGrasse Tyson – Death by Black Hole (I love this guy every time I see him on the Daily Show. Such a fascinating man of Science!)
4. David Sedaris – Holidays on Ice (a present from a special lady that I’ve been meaning to get around to)
5. Gabriel Garcia Maquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude (probably ambitious)
6. Dossie and Easton – The Ethical Slut (this belongs to Doug, but I am reading it anyway because a lot of books in my house belong to Doug, especially the new age ones)
7. Neil Gaiman – Smoke and Mirrors (borrowed from Jennstar. I liked the Graveyard Book okay).
8. Carlos Casteneda – The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (new age stuff)
9. Neal Stephenson – Snow Crash (sci-fi stuff! borrowed from Adam)
10. Michael Pollan – Omnivore’s Dilemma (this is a book that a lot of people have read)
11. John Crowley – Little, Big (this was recommended by small friend, and I trust her tastes)
12. Katherine Dunn – Geek Love (this was borrowed from small friend and it’s been on my to read list for years. everyone’s gonna get some books returned to them in a year!)

Okay, I’ve now officially challenged myself. Let’s do this.

~ by jsipes on August 27, 2010.