We’re halfway into the first month of the new year, and I’ve not said anything about 52 Books in 52 Weeks for a while. What gives?
For anyone who was keeping track, I fell woefully short of the 52 book mark, ending the year having read 36 books (and started 4 others, which weren’t completed when my clock clicked over to 2008). I think I ended up not reaching 52 total because I got hung up on some of the books near the end - specifically, the books for classes, most of which were history, which typically take me longer than a week to read. I suppose it goes without saying that the time and mental effort it takes to read a Harry Potter book is a bit less than that needed to read A History of India.
Am I going to do it again? No, I don’t think so. It made reading for pleasure too much like work for me. With school, I have enough deadlines to meet without creating more for myself. As can be seen by looking at the 2007 list, I skipped writing posts for quite a few books, and most of those ended up being books I read for university courses. For most of those books, I had to write responses / papers on them for class - the last thing I wanted to do was turn around and write a blog entry for them. But more importantly, like I said, the 52 books in 52 weeks thing just made pleasure reading too much like work. If I fell behind, I felt crappy about it, which generally just made me fall more behind. The more I fell behind, the more nasty the idea of rushing through a dozen books to “catch up” sounded. I didn’t want to rush through books I was reading for fun - I wanted to take them at whatever pace seemed appropriate.
Perhaps - indeed, I’d say almost certainly - I’ve taken this, and blown it out of proportion. But ultimately, I didn’t like setting myself a goal - even if it was as silly as reading 1 book a week and blogging about it - and then falling short of it. I’m going to obviously continue reading books, and I’ll continue to blog about them. But no more scheduled reading for me, unless the schedule is handed to me by someone I usually address as “professor.”
Incidentally, while I don’t plan on forcing myself to stick to a reading schedule, the 52 books in 52 weeks experiment did lead to me seeing how many books I can read, if I stick to (mostly) one at a time, and focus on getting through it. Certainly, 2007 is the year in which I’ve read the most books thus far.
Before I go any further with this post, please be aware that there will be some major spoilers in it. If you’ve not read this one yet, steer clear. With that out of the way…
): Is Harry one of the Horcruxes? If he is, I suppose that would explain why he has to die in Deathly Hallows. He would also fit (sort of) the description of being “of the Gryffindor House.” Wouldn’t that be a bummer for him? All of this fighting Voldemort, figuring out how to take him down, only to discover that he himself (Harry) has to die before Voldemort will kick the bucket.
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