I thought I heard something on the radio the other day that among those who read at least one book in the past year, the average number of books read is 20.

I was stunned.  I’ve always thought of myself as pretty well-read, but I’m hard pressed to remember even six books I finished last year (if we include titles like Mother Cat’s Busy Day, then the number increases to something like 534).  Upon reflection, I realized that I read a lot, but it’s largely newspapers, magazines (The Walrus, The New York Times Magazine, US Weekly), and online articles.  Somehow books have taken a backseat to other priorities, and I didn’t even notice it.

So, I decided that I should make some time for reading, and have set a goal of getting through two books a month.  Coincidentally, my friend Kelly-in-Vancouver recently challenged herself to read 50 books this year, which puts my little project to shame.

So far, so good.  I just finished A.J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Bibically, an entertaining read that I will come back to another time.  I also admit to having read Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager, a fluffy motivational business book that I only read to pad my numbers.

I’m now working on book five – Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.  Then I think it will be time for some fiction.  Titles in the queue include A Complicated Kindness, Bill Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy, Flashman on the March, and everything by Cormac McCarthy.  If you have any recommendations, pass them along.  No Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, please – I’m interested in sprints, not marathons…