Day One

I own too many books. WAY too many books. And still I keep buying more. It's an addiction, I guess. But now the guilt has gotten to me. I have resolved that before I can buy a SINGLE NEW BOOK, I have to finish all the ones I already own.

Here's the loooooong list of books I own but have not read:

1. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler
2. The Amateur Marriage - Anne Tyler
3. The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler
4. The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
5. Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver
6. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver
7. The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
8. Midwives - Chris Bohjalian
9. Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness - Sheila Kohler
10. Good in Bed - Jennifer Weiner
11. Certain Girls - Jennifer Weiner
12. I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb
13. Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
14. Girl, Interrupted - Susanna Kaysen
15. Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
16. The Carbon Age - Eric Roston
17. Motiba's Tattoos - Mira Kamdar
18. Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquirel
19. March - Geraldine Brooks
20. Pope Joan - Donna Woolfolk Cross
21. China Men - Maxine Hong Kingston
22. Rut - Scott Phillips
23. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
24. Stones From the River - Ursula Hegi
25. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
26. The Piano Teacher - Janice Y. K. Lee
27. The Midwife - Jennifer Worth
28. Summer - Edith Wharton
29. Short Stories - Edith Wharton
30. The Ruins of Us - Keija Parssinen
31. The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
32. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
33. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress - Rhoda Janzen
34. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
35. Minaret - Leila Aboulela
36. The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
37. The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K Le Guin
38. Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
39. Wicked - Gregory Maguire
40. The Lost Daughters of Happiness - Geling Yan
41. White Ghost Girls - Alice Greenway
42. Empress - Shan Sa
43. The Good Earth - Pearl S Buck
44. Dream of the Red Chamber - Tsao Hsueh-Chin
45. Tears of the Cheetah - Stephen J. O'Brien
46. The Canon - Natalie Angier
47. The Common Thread - John Sulston and Georgina Ferry
48. Zorro - Isabel Allende
49. Silas Marner - George Eliot
50. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
51. North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
52. Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell
53. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
54. Possession - A.S. Byatt
55. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
56. Servants of the Map - Andrea Barrett
57. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
58. Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
59. The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks
60. Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich
61. The Bone Woman - Clea Koff
62. Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA - Brenda Maddox
63. Incantations - Anjana Appachana
64. Love is a Mix Tape - Rob Sheffield
65. The Friday Night Knitting Club - Kate Jacobs
66. London - Edward Rutherfurd
67. The Dancing Girls of Lahore - Louise Brown

It's a fairly random mix of fiction and non-fiction and, in my defense, I did not buy all of them. I did purchase the vast majority, though. I wonder how much of my total net worth (however meager it may be) is tied up in my substantial library.

There are a couple authors who show up a lot on the list. I have a habit of reading one book by an author and, if I like it, trying to read everything else the person has ever written. I've read the complete works of Isabel Allende, Amy Tan, Jane Austen and Matt Ridley by this method. I'm going to guess Mr. Ridley never thought his name would show up on a list right after Ms. Austen. This is what happens when a book worm goes into science for a career.

Of course, if I like an author and buy her other works without actually reading them... they end up on this list. Oops. I read Digging to America and A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler and really liked them, so I rapidly accumulated books by her... and haven't read them yet. Shame on me. The same pattern was followed for Jennifer Weiner (based on In Her Shoes) and Barbara Kingsolver (based on The Poisonwood Bible).

There are also some books that I purchased with the intent of "improving myself" through reading... or at least making myself sound better in conversation with my better-read friends. These include Reading Lolita in Tehran and Girl, Interrupted. I can't pretend to be intellectually rigorous just by having them gathering dust... though it is tempting.

And then there are some books that I bought simply because they were on sale at a used book store. I have a serious weakness for used books. For examples, see: The Carbon Age, Motiba's Tattoos and Pope Joan.

So, now I have to read all these books. I think one book per week sounds reasonable. I'll give myself two weeks for particularly long books like I Know This Much is True (897 pages... eek!) and hopefully take less time to finish up short reads like Love is a Mix Tape. If I absolutely hate a book, I'm not going to force myself to finish it. But I must make it at least halfway through before deciding to move on. I will use a random number generator to pick each new book, using the numbers in the list above, but I'm going to start with Cutting for Stone, since I'm already well into that one.

Ok, I think that sufficiently sets up the ground rules. Here goes the grand experiment!