July 1 is upon us. I was hoping to get entirely ‘caught up,’ that is having finished 150 books by the halfway point of 2019.
I didn’t quite hit this goal, I have about 5 pages left in book #148, and will finish that after I go to bed tonight, (techincally the evening of 6-30.) I have another dozen or so titles I’m ‘actively reading’ in that I’ve picked them up at some point in the last 2-3 days at least once, and other 4-5 that I’ve started and stopped at some point during this process (and intend to take up again.) I’m not particularly near the end of any of those, though I am past halfway on at least one
I had a good run at doing the writeups, but hit a snag with the most recent one (which was quite long,) and then found it’s followed by a string of books with either long writeups or potentially short ones for which I gathered very little material (these are mainly from books I own, but nonetheless, it means more work is required to start cranking them out. And I was really making a push for 150.
I just did some math, there are 183 days left in the year, and 52 books to complete, therefore I must finish one book every 3.5 days to complete the challenge. So in the 31 days of August I will need to finish both reading 8.5 books, and also around 55 writeups to meet my previously stated goal of being entirely caught up on the whole project.
Recent circumstances (a couple of serious family illnesses and the rapidly-approaching start of a new job) have interfered a bit with my time to work on this, but still, I think I’ve gotten a real handle on it and should be able to keep it up for a few more months. Considering I was only at 86 of 100 for the first year, I don’t think I’m unjustifiably proud of having gotten to 148 in the span of 6 months. (That’s 62, or one every 3 days, and I’ve knocked off some serious doorstops during the process.)
I’ve managed to read a lot of really neat stuff too, and that’s the most important point.
I usually set a goal in these posts, so I will do that – 157 titles complete by the end of July, plus getting caught up in writeups will be my ‘stretch goal.’ I’ll re-evaluate in mid-July and see how I’ve managed to catch up on the book reports, something like 145 may be a more realistic ‘stretch.’ But we will see…
ianuaditis 