10 Down

Germany is very cold. The sun is sorry and don’t be deceived when it manages to break through the grey.

Lots of traveling these days, but also staying put and receiving visitors. I try to make the most of plane time, reading or napping or listening to a podcast. On the last trip I listened to a Mary Gaitskill story called “A Dream of Men,” which was terrific. It made me regret not having read Mary Gaitskill yet.

I entertained the idea of doing a reading challenge this year and checked out a few popular ones. Understandably most of them encourage you to try genre fiction and, while I’m open to sci-fi and horror and even westerns, there is no way I’ll read romance fiction, and that’s what the two most promising challenges asked for. Why even begin? Then I thought it might be fun to put together my own challenge so I started composing a list until it began to roll its many eyes...

Read a book that came out the month you were born
Read a book about disgrace

Read a novel set outdoors
Read a trilogy backwards
Read a thriller by a person with a rare disease

I dropped this pursuit and simply set a goal of reading 60 books. 10 down.