Reading List / Challenge

So, recently, MC and I decided that we need to stop having the TV on as our default activity when we just want to relax and so we devised a few activities to do instead. One of the activities was to have "Language Night" where we both study language for at least an hour (She's working on Italian for the honeymoon and I'm working on Spanish). The other one was reading. We had a few books that we had sitting around that we had been wanting to read but never got around to it. So we also have a "Reading Night" where we spend at least one hour reading our current book (though just doing this has made us turn most nights into reading nights as well).

Once we started reading a bit more, we decided that we would try to find a "Must-read Books" list of some sort that would include a lot of classics that most people should read, but don't always get around to doing so. So we looked around and found many lists, some shoddy, some extremely long, until we finally found one that we both liked. Now it has a little bit of a British skew since it was done by BBC, but I liked that it was basically an accumulation of reader responses, as opposed to one "expert" telling me what I should read.

We thought that such a large undertaking would benefit from documentation and it would be nice to have some milestones to celebrate along the way. So I created us a Google spreadsheet to keep track. I have all the fancy formulas to keep counts for each set of 20 books (read in any order), a total count, and rewarding automatic changes when milestones are reached. MC may think I'm a little obsessive, but I think it turned out pretty good :-) I also left room at the bottom for us to add our own books whenever we want to read something not on the list. (I am currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and MC is reading "The Watchers" by Dean Koontz) These additional books have no effect on our 20 book milestones, but they are added to the total so we still "get credit." :-)

It will definitely be an interesting undertaking and, perhaps, I may start adding book reviews to my blog since I will have much more to contribute in that arena (though I hardly have the literary background to provide a very meaningful critique). AT the very least I can look back and read what I wrote since I am terrible about remembering anything haha. Wish us luck!