The other day on NPR there was an interview with an author. Unfortunately the name of the author slips my memory. But the interesting thing was his first book was based on his experiment during which he read the entire '5 foot shelf' in about an year and a half. It instantly sparked an idea, on whether one can pull something off like that in a year along with a day job. I figured something like a book a week would be doable. So one could with some effort pull off 52 books within the year.
Now keep in mind, the Harvard classics collection is much more than 52 books. A lot of those are collections. For e.g.. Plato's 3 books are clubbed as one. Its amazing that one can get an entire used collection for about $200-$300 bucks online. This works out to about $4-$5 a book which I think is a steal. I would love to have something like this at my home just for the sake of posterity.
At this point, my 1 bedroom apartment cannot afford luxury of having the entire physical collection. So I found the next best thing. The Gutenburg project and the Internet Archive both have the entire collection in web format for free. Since the books are all over at least 100 years old, they are all out of copyright and can be downloaded for free. They also have the kindle versions for each. Giddy with excitement, I downloaded the entire collection to my kindle, armed to set forth on my expedition.
I started off with a couple and immediately realized my folly. I've been out of the habit of reading for such a long while, that starting off with century old classics was too daunting a task. And also going through the list, my initial enthusiasm watered down to tentative apprehension. I wondered whether I had signed up something too onerous. My wife suggested that I instead start with something easier and lighter. There have been lots of other great books which I had wanted to read but never got to. It helped that she is a voracious reader herself and had a bunch of books on her kindle. Also she's been going to the Mt. View library on a regular basis and bought me a bunch of books.
So long story short, I've been on a reading spree since the past month. I'm keeping my schedule of a book a week, so that means I'm on target for 52 for the year. Although I do want to get to the my original goal of reading the Harvard classics, I'm not complaining right now.
Now keep in mind, the Harvard classics collection is much more than 52 books. A lot of those are collections. For e.g.. Plato's 3 books are clubbed as one. Its amazing that one can get an entire used collection for about $200-$300 bucks online. This works out to about $4-$5 a book which I think is a steal. I would love to have something like this at my home just for the sake of posterity.
I started off with a couple and immediately realized my folly. I've been out of the habit of reading for such a long while, that starting off with century old classics was too daunting a task. And also going through the list, my initial enthusiasm watered down to tentative apprehension. I wondered whether I had signed up something too onerous. My wife suggested that I instead start with something easier and lighter. There have been lots of other great books which I had wanted to read but never got to. It helped that she is a voracious reader herself and had a bunch of books on her kindle. Also she's been going to the Mt. View library on a regular basis and bought me a bunch of books.
So long story short, I've been on a reading spree since the past month. I'm keeping my schedule of a book a week, so that means I'm on target for 52 for the year. Although I do want to get to the my original goal of reading the Harvard classics, I'm not complaining right now.