The Big Read

Somewhere in the course of looking around on Wikipedia I happened across an article called The Big Read.  It's a list of books compiled by popular vote in England.  It is supposed to be the best books that people have ever read.  Since I love to read and practically devour the written word (especially now that I'm out of college and don't have required reading), I was surprised at how many of the books I haven't read and that several of them I hadn't even heard of.  So I did what any book and Excel lover would do, I made a spreadsheet of the books and authors, highlighted the ones I've read and printed it out.  Now I am up to my eyeballs in books.  Swimming in them.  My little reading basket is nye to overflowing.  But I love it :)  Books make me happy.  Josh asked me the other night "Don't you ever get tired of reading".  I felt like Data trying to process a complex human emotion (Star Trek reference), the entire concept just didn't make sense.

So far off the list, and I had to take a break to read the book club book, I've read Pillars of the Earth, Brideshead Revisited, and am working on The Poisonwood Bible.  It's definitely a broad range of time periods and plot lines so I'm enjoying it as a whole, but I have to say that Brideshead was just not my cup of tea.  And I'm dreading the Steinbeck works like the plague.  Blah.  That man uses more words to say nothing than anyone else I've read and that includes really wordy authors like Tolstoy.  I don't know who his editor was, but he must have not fully comprehended the reason for his position.  If you love to read, you should definitely check out the list.  I absolutely love having a goal of any sort so I'm pretty stoked about the whole prospect of reading the entire list and I love that Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors, has 15 novels on the list!