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Reading report, February 13, 2017


It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week."

Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the last week.
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I didn't read much last week - didn't feel like making a push to finish any of the books I have been reading - but did finish one I have been steadily reading over the last couple of years:

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. This monster of a book is more than 900 pages long and I have been reading it bit by bit in the loo. It's funny (or perhaps not) that when I started it I was going "I've read that!" almost every time I turned a page, but after the 1920s these silent exclamations got fewer and fewer as I got closer to my own time, and I had only read a handful of the books published after 1990, although I own copies of several more that I plan to read when that mythical "one day" rolls around.

Much as I detest books and articles telling me I must do something, I found it interesting to see what books were chosen for inclusion in this volume. The edition I have is the original 2006 one, but I know the list has been changed in subsequent editions.

I figured it might be interesting to see how many of these books I have read, but I haven't been able to find the original 2006 list online and I am certainly not going to type it all up myself, so it will have to wait.

Its replacement in the loo is 1000 Places to See Before You Die. I expect that one will take at least a year to finish. I hope I may find some places in it that I deem worthy of visiting, but I am no more  going to start chasing those places than I am going to read all the books in 1001 Books....

I have started reading Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron and expect to finish that in rather less time than 1000 Places.... I am having slight doubts about whether or not to continue reading it (Thubron can be a bit hard to get into, as I experienced when I read one of his previous books), but I am planning to give it the 50-page treatment before deciding.



Comments

Beth F said…
Ha! I'm the same way with those books. You can always tell when I was in grad school or starting my business, because those years are kind of empty in the "I've Read That" department. Sounds like a fun book to look through.
What an interesting choice to read! I've never really thought about reading a whole book about books to read! It must have added quite a few to your TBR list. :)

I hope you have a better reading week this week. :)
I have a Google Doc of the 1001 list under the tab Perpetual Challenges. You can easily copy and paste the list from there, I think.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IZFWgGmm8BkWJ-5wExcHW5-btimCMNyKw26stuJEj-E
Poem fanatic said…
I've never really tried to read a catalog of "must-read" books. I've always chosen to scroll through infinite pages of reviews instead!
Kathy Martin said…
I am not good at reading "should read" books because, I'll admit, my reading tastes are both eccentric and low brow. I like genre fiction. Come see my week here. Happy reading!
Hopewell said…
Check the Goodreads group for reading these. Also https://1001bookreviews.com/the-1001-book-list/

It gets updated from time-to-time as you've seen. The Group on Goodreads votes on one to read each month. I don't usually finish them quickly so I don't commment in the group much. I keep track of those on the list that I read though.

Lisa @ https://hopewellslibraryoflife.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/the-mothers-by-britt-bennett/
Greg said…
Seems like an interesting book. I wonder how many I've read (or want to read) would be in there...

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