A number of years ago, a friend of mine gave me one of those 1001 Things to do before you die books. I’ve seen them for places, for films and other such things, but in this case, this one for me was ‘1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die’. Here’s a link to it on Boomerang Books. Now, normally, I’m not the greatest fan of such books – I think making lists of things like this takes away a lot of the special nature of finding out about these books yourself, through friends, through reviews, through your own reading, and the anti-authoritarian in me resents other people making lists of what I should and shouldn’t read, but for someone reason, I noticed this book sitting on the book shelf – practically unopened, and I took it down and flicked through it.
To be honest, the book had sat there for at least five years. I’m not sure why it caught my eye, but I think it was linked to my movement towards reading more and more on my iPad – a movement that, I think, is becoming more and more common – even amongst my diehard ‘paperback is the only way’ friends and family. After all, if you’ve never used an iPad or a Kindle, you might not be aware that vast numbers of books (albeit, mostly older books) are available for free.
The book list had sat on the shelf for about 5 years and I took it down and opened it up. Now, I consider myself reasonably well read – I’ve a degree in English, and I’ve always read for work as well as pleasure, but I was horrified as I flicked through the pages – horrified at how many of the books I hadn’t read – and worse than that – horrified at how many of the books I hadn’t even heard of!
Out of curiosity, I visited the iBookstore on my iPad, to see how many of the books in the list were in the bookstore – and how many of them were available for free. Not surprisingly, the first couple, including Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, were there for free. At that point, I decided to set myself a new challenge:
Over the course of however long it takes, I will read each of these books that I can find on the iBookstore, and for each book that I read, I will write a review of approximately 700 words and post it on my blog. I’m stating off in the 20th Century, with Lord Jim, first published as a novel in 1900.
Let’s see how far I get before I lose interest in this project.