Day -47: Year Zero

My reading plan for 2015, and therefore for 2016-2035, started with the 2015 Reading Challenge on the Goodreads app and site. The challenge, as they implemented it, is about how many books you read. I decided to do it differently. I set my target as 11 books, but I also picked out which 11. And, by my standards, it's an ambitious list, headlined by Capital in the 21st Century and Infinite Jest. There were also two Star Wars novels, the next volume in five different series (one of which was also Star Wars), and a couple others.

I made a spreadsheet. I check the sheet every day, keep it updated, and it motivates me. In particular the graph.

In this graph, the red line is, of course, how far through the year we are. The purple line is the percentage of the year's reading I have accomplished. But the orange line, that's the motivator. On the right axis, it's how many pages a day I have to read to finish by the end of the year. I had hoped to see it drop to 0 by the end. Now I'm just hoping to not see it go to 100. 

But it will. Infinite Jest is proving a challenge. I'm enjoying it quite a lot, but I don't think I'll finish it in the next seven weeks, largely because we have a baby in the house now. 

I should note that I went off-list this year, too, adding novels that weren't on the plan. I read The Girl in the Road (and it blew my mind), and then when I finished Ship of Magic I plowed right into the two sequels. In part, this gives me the confidence that I can accomplish the Plan--the total page count of what I've read and plan to read is more than 6,000 pages, with abnormally tough pages taking up a quarter of those. 

Still, I'm going to finish Infinite Jest (and probably Sanctuary) next year, making this year's challenge technically a failure. But it showed me what I can do and how, so I'm calling it a victory.