I have a friend who set herself a goal of 100 books in one year. I don’t even try to read that many, and never manage to finish everything that I start. Some are meant to be dipped into and not read cover to cover, like the BKS Iyengar classic, An Illustrated Light on Yoga. Hence, a few books sit on the night-stand for quite a while and cross over a year or so.
This year is no different. Add full-time work (where, let’s face it, I read and write all day) some of the blogs that I read regularly and my 10 weeks in Italy into the mix and I can see why I didn’t have enough time for pleasure reading.
Some of the books I read or started, and mostly finished, are shown below. I enjoyed them all for wildly different reasons (made me laugh, made me think, took me far away, made me smile at the sheer beauty of the writing, made me more aware).
Some I re-read, like The Phantom Tollbooth. Two are unfinished, The Songlines and The Sea. I put them aside when heading overseas and concentrated on my Lonely Planet Italy Guide and my notebooks for my classes while studying Italian. I took the dog-eared Anatomy of Restlessness (compilation of Bruce Chatwin stories, reviews and articles) with me for flights. But I don’t really read much on holidays when I go away. Home holidays are better for that.
There is a new list on the night-stand now. My list for the remaining days of this year and for 2011. I’ll report back next year on how well I go (and try to not get too distracted by other books throughout the year). Happy reading friends
MLT at Large 
I read on planes and I read when I am in Italy, but I rarely read when I am at home in Australia. When had my business I didn’t read because I was always sewing or doing somethig else related to the shop. If I read I felt guilty. I haven’t been able to get past that here. In Italy TV is so awful, I usually read at night or on those cold, wet winter days when i don’t want to venture outside. I like the look of some of the books in you pile.
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