The Year of Obsessive Reading

My son was reading some Guinness book world records to me from a book he got at the library (complete with showing disgusting pictures of the guy who can pull his eyelids out the furthest and the woman who has grown her nails so long they curl over and over).

And I think: I totally get weird personal obsessions like that. Other people look at you and go, dude, that’s weird to be so committed to something so random, and wow-ee, look at you getting recognition for your weird random sh**. But to the person with the weird random sh**, it feels very significant. For me this year, it’s been books. Okay, books and obsessive amounts of writing.

I’ve read over 200 books this year so far since January. This month, September, I’ve read a book every single day of the month. I realized I was doing it by about September 15^th, and the I was like, well hell, why don’t I keep it up and read a book every day for the whole month. I chart it all on an excel spreadsheet. I get excited when I pass big barriers like 100, 150, 200. Nobody in the world could care less about my weird obsessive reading compulsion, but it brings me an inordinate amount of glee, on top of the usual book loving glee I get by reading the actual book ;)

It takes me about 4-5 hours to read a 300-400 page book. I've read NA, Christian Fiction, Historical Romance, Historical Fiction, research books about Romania, lol, basically everything except YA. And I’ve written about a thousand pages this year (on 7 different projects). Both of these weird obsessions this year are highly unusual (most years I read about 60-80 bks and write only one 300 pager). Basically, lately all I do is write, read books, and binge on Project Runway. Oh and eat dinner with my family. That’s it. I hear other people talk about, you know, the things they do in their lives, and I'm like...um, I read this really good book and am learning how to better control narrative distance better in my own writing...

This probably all makes more sense if I put it in context—I’ve been basically couch-bound all year because of my chronic illness. Nobody does sedentary busy-body like me. I should hold the Guinness world record for best couch-bound overachiever ;) Mainly I just feel like this year has been weird, really, really weird. I've actually been really happy throughout it, but yeah. Weird! I doubt I'll ever read this many books in a year ever again, but since I'm in it, like the lady with the crazy unwieldly nails, I'm committed. Lets see how many books I can break before December 31st!