Many have tried. Many have failed. But here I go: I am going to try to read one book a week. It shouldn’t be hard, in theory: Until I graduated from high school, I sometimes read three books a day. Social awkwardness is made, not born, kids. But somewhere in adulthood, I got distracted by other things, and now reading is a struggle.
That’s not quite right. I’m literate, I promise: Making time to read is a struggle. I keep getting distracted by shiny hobbies, like cooking and crafting and cleaning up dog shit. And I read things all day long for a living, so reading outside of work is like a janitor mopping floors for kicks. But much of what I edit is deeply terrible, and I need to rediscover the love.
So I’m going to set some ground rules for myself:
1. No books that suck. If, 50 pages into it, I want to spork my eyes out, the book is gone. This ain’t high school, where I HAVE to wade through “Moby Dick.” There is absolutely no reason I have to subject myself to Ann Coulter. I’m a grown-up: I bought the book, I can burn it if I want to.
2. No book is off limits. It doesn’t have to be great literature, it just has to have words. I’ll even allow for audiobooks. I don’t “read” many of them, because my sleep circuit fires when people read me stories, but they will do just fine.
I should be able to do this. I’ll review the books I read and let you know how it goes. What books do you recommend? Any I should stay the hell away from?
. I couldn’t find it in my grocery store, so I used 
, and it worked out well.
