So, OK. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and lately I've been kinda bored here. Not crazy bored, just like oh-wow-I-need-a-new-project-because-I'm-feeling-restless-and-I-have-no-money kind of bored. And one day I was at the Melbourne City Library, trying to decide what books to check out and feeling very meh about the whole thing. I realized I was just feeling a little underwhelmed about reading lately. It had been awhile since I'd discovered a really good book or author. So, I thought to myself, Effit, just go and pick up the very first book on the fiction shelf, just to see if it's any good. It'll be an experiment, no biggie.
So I went to the very first shelf in the fiction section and picked up the very first book, which happened to be Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London. I checked it out, took it home, read it, liked it, returned it, and picked up the next one over on the shelf, which was the sequel to Rivers of London.
And then it hit me:
I could, like, keep doing this!
I could read my way through the entire Melbourne City Library, book-by-book, in order, and see how far I got! It would be a great way to gain exposure to new authors and series and maybe even whole genres.
Then some other stuff hit me:
- I'm not a fan of non-fiction.
- I'm only literate in one language, Engrish.
- A lot of the books in the library are unreadable books, like cookbooks and thesauruses (thesauri?) and stuff like that.
- Kids' books can be super lame and I would feel weird bringing Everybody Poops to the check-out counter anyway.
Before I reached my goal, I'll either: a) Give up, or b) Move away from Melbourne. But let's just see. I'm leaning toward b). I'm pretty stubborn with these kinds of things when I start them.
I also set myself some ground rules:
1) Write a book review of every book I read on this blog, and copy that review onto Goodreads. I want a record of what books I liked and didn't. And Goodreads is the beesknees. Maybe my reviews will actually help other people decide what they should check out at their library. Or maybe I'm just being a self-important schmuck.
2) Read the books in order as they appear on the shelf. Don't worry about books that are missing from the shelf because they're checked out by someone else. Just move on to the next book that's physically there, and don't go back later on trying to figure out if you missed some that had gotten checked back in. Just keep plowing forward.
3) Skip books I've previously read, if I remember them pretty well. I've read Jane Eyre eighteen million times, so if I see it on the shelf (which I better, or Melbourne City Library isn't much of a library) -- I'll pass it over. If I think I mayyyyyy have read a book, but can't really remember it that well, I need to go ahead and check it out and read it again.
That's it. Simples!
