Books

So not too long after the turnover to 2007, I chatted with Amber about seeing how many books we could read this year. I have this pile of books in my house that are waiting for me to read them, but sometimes I just need motivation. I thought having someone else helping me to read as much as possible this year would help. And so the first week I was making headway on one book.

Since then it's been me losing big time. Sure, it's not a competition, whatever. But Amber is kicking my butt (and poking fun at me on her MySpace, all LOLROTFL 'n' junk) about how little reading I've done.

She's beating me big time. Two weeks ago, Amber had already read something like 468 books, and I'd read one. And that one book was only a graphic novel by Frank Miller ("300", so I can be ready to see the movie), and so I guess it counts - but not really. Come on now, I love Miller's work, but there aren't that many words in his graphic novels.

Now two weeks later, I've read a total of two books, and Amber's up to something like 494.

Okay, she said she's only up to 12, but still - I'm not making good on my side of the deal here. I read in phases, though. I'll go through a month-long period where I'll be a voracious reader and go through four or five books. That's voracious for me. But then I'll hit a period where I can't read anything.

Thankfully now I think I'm moving back into a reading phase (thanks to Amber's joking), so I've finished two books and am half-way through another. This week I finished "Juiced" - the autobiography by former baseball player Jose Canseco.

It's an easy read, Canseco's certainly not a complex writer like Melville or anything. Most of the time he's descending into narcissism and touting the awesomeness of steroids and how he brought them into baseball. I do like books like this because I enjoy learning about what ball players do when they're not on the field, and Canseco doesn't fail there. He also drops names like no one's business, it's interesting not only to read who else does steroids like he did, but it's also funny hearing how these guys would all follow each other into the bathroom at the park and inject steroid needles into each other's "glutes." For how homophobic many athletes are, that's pretty funny.

So yeah, it's a good and easy read if you want to learn some more baseball details and hear his sermons on how amazing steroids are. He does raise some good points, if you can find them through all his "I'm so awesome and cool and not a bad guy at all" chapters.

I hope to have my third book read by the end of this weekend - I'm half-way through "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kersey, and I'm really enjoying it.

I'm sure that during the next few days Amber will read another 14 books. And that's okay, I can make myself feel better by thinking about how much I've motivated someone else to read. Yeah, that's it.

Amber: 12
Me: 2