The Depths of My Insanity

So, calculations have been made and I am officially crazy.

I have made my lists (in nice neat spreadsheet format, of course), to track all the books I have committed to reading, all the books I have already read, and what I own already. I also decided last night that it would be awesome to add more books to the list.

I've been on a non-fiction kick of late (truly my mother's daughter) and while reading John Adams by David McCullough, itself a winner of the Pulitzer for Biography/Autobiography, I thought "hey, why should I let the fiction have all the fun?" So, I have added more scope. I now wish to also read all the Pulitzer and National Book Award winners for non-fiction. Stand and be amazed at the depths of my crazy.

Between all seven award categories there are 398 books. So far in my previous reading (some of it since January of this year), I have tackled a paltry 32 books from this list. And, thanks to my sad and expensive addiction to Borders, I own 25 more that I'm hoping to read before the year is out.

So, as of today, kids, that's 366 books to tackle and one woman's questionable sanity.

August 21, 2009: 342 pages into All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren. Looking to make my total 365 by next week.

Away we go...

So, acting out of a sense of peer pressure, I have begun a blog. My goal is to track my progress as I make my way through a list of over 300 books that have won literary awards.

A life-long and self-avowed bookworm, at the beginning of this year I began a project of reading every book that has won one (or in some cases more) of the following awards:

-Pulitzer Prize for Literature
-Man Booker Prize
-National Book Award for Fiction
-National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction
-Newbery Medal

My inspiration came from a bookmark I picked up in June of 2007 at Powell's (A.K.A My version of the happiest place on earth). The bookmark displayed a list of the Pulitzer Prize winners and I thought "It's kind of sad that I call myself an English Major, yet have not read even half of these books." These books are the foundation of many of the literary movements, books that have inspired films, art, poets, and more. So, I decided to broaden my literary boundaries.

Wish me luck folks.