Comments on: 52 Books in 52 Weeks – Looking Back

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:29:10 +0000

Renee: Grats on the master’s thesis completion! I’ve heard those (and their bigger brothers, Ph D. dissertations) are terrible beasts.

Thanks for the luck.

By: Renee

Renee — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:42:51 +0000

I didn’t make it either… I planned to read 26 books in the second half of the year but managed 11. Like you, I wasn’t prepared to drop everything in favour of my targets. Besides, I had a master thesis to finish (a more important target that I did achieve, hooray!).
I _have_ set a new target: at least one book for every month, but I’m on my third book already (ah the blessings of being unemployed…).
Good luck in your studies – I’m glad you got your priorities right

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:55:29 +0000

Tom: Yeah, I hadn’t really anticipated that, if I fell behind, I’d get frustrated with myself, even if the self-imposed limit was largely silly. It’s not like I was going to lower my “grade” if I fell behind on the book count.

I didn’t want to just go silent about it because it was, in a way, an experiment for me. I’d never planned on reading that many books in a year, and so it being an experiment, I wanted to report on my “findings”, if you will, even if they weren’t what I had expected. I tried it, and it didn’t work for me. It worked for A Modest Construct, repeatedly. Who knows; maybe, now that I’m not setting any artificial limits on myself, I’ll end up reading 60 books this year.

Thanks for the cheers, even if they are perhaps unwarranted. Honesty shouldn’t be so rare as to bring about applause.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 06:49:01 +0000

I love your honesty. I wouldn’t be ambitious enough to attempt something like this. I know myself well enough to know that self imposed time limits get scrutinized heavily and if they don’t pass muster they get dumped. As such I won’t bother even attempting this on my own, I can use your result to approximate my own .

I do like the fact that you didn’t just forget about the entire thing. It’s one thing to not finish a few books and altogether (all together?) another to drop everything, which you didn’t do.

Three cheers for the J man.