52 Books in 52 Weeks

   Disclaimer - this post has nothing to do with swimming, biking, running or races of any kind. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite as it's about sitting for long periods of time. However, though I was sitting, I was still getting a workout of sorts, but a mental workout rather than physical. Not to be a total geek, but one of my biggest enjoyments in life is reading a good book. Even as a kid, I've always loved to read. And recently, I've also found that many of my running / triathlete friends are also voracious readers. Must be part of our DNA that we can focus on a singular activity for long periods of time. Or maybe we're just so freakin' tired from all of the working out we do that we need to rest and just read for a while.

   Anyway, as I have mentioned (and is blatantly obvious if you have read any of my posts), I'm all about setting goals for myself. I also have a weird personality quirk in that if someone challenges me to do something, I pretty much have to do it (within reason - I'm not jumping out of a plane or anything). So when the reading social media site Goodreads (it's like Facebook, but with books), issued a 2013 reading challenge, I jumped right in there.
   The Goodreads Challenge was simple. Pick a number of books you wanted to read for the year and read them. I chose to read 52 books. I figured that was a nice number - a book a week. I could do that. Some people (like my FTP coach Jessica) went totally crazy and picked 100 books, others chose a more reasonable number like 26. Goodreads allows you to keep track of what books you read, as well as when you started and finished them. You can also see what your friends are reading and get recommendations based on your past books, which has nothing to do with the Challenge, but definitely helps when picking out new books.
  Well, as of yesterday, I finished "The Seven Sisters" by Margaret Drabble, which was my 52nd book. I did it! 52 books in 52 weeks! Honestly, it was harder than I thought it would be. It's kind of like training. As much as I like swimming/biking/running, there is a different feeling when you HAVE to go out and train than when you're just doing it for fun. There were times when I was like "I HAVE to read tonight or I'll get behind." Reading shouldn't be that stressful!
  You might be wondering where I got all of the books. Well, some were book group reads (I belong to 2.5 book groups. Two actually meet on a regular basis and the other is more virtual, though we meet every few months to swap books and eat cookies). Some I heard about on NPR - I'm a big fan of the NPR book recommendations. Some books I borrowed from the library or friends. For years, I used to buy every book group book in hardcover, but I pretty much ran out of room. So now I borrow when I can and only buy the book if I really like it. And yes, I'll read books I like over and over and over again.
   I also downloaded a lot of books from BookBub. BookBub is a service that scours sites like Amazon and Kindle for downloadable books on sale or even free. They then e-mail you book suggestions based on information you wrote when you signed up. So many books I read I had never heard of previously, but they were free from BookBub, so I downloaded them. Some were good, some were not, but they were free so what the heck, right? You never know where you're going to find your next favorite author.
   The topic range of books varied pretty drastically - some were non-fiction, some were business (marketing / social media), some were best-sellers and some were complete fluff. I read a lot about World War II this year, as that was a theme of one of my book groups. I think I could gone the entire year just reading about WWII. Fascinating time period in our history.
  As far as my three favorites?  I'll have to go with the following: "The Language of Flowers" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walters and "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline. My big regret was not finishing a biography of Benedict Arnold. It was interesting in a dry, detailed-history sort of way, but it was taking me way too long to read so I put it aside. I'll probably finish it now that the Challenge is over.
   So that's it. That's what I do when I'm not out doing something athletic - I sit on my butt and read. And I love every minute of it. If you have any recommendations for me, please post them. And please join Goodreads and friend me! We can be book geeks together!