Collateral Bloggage What passes for thought around here…

MMM: Books I’d Like to Read, IRS, Strawberries again

(Somewhere in this post is a deliberate misspelling.  It's a movie reference.  Bonus points to any who can figure it out.  The Fair Elaine already found it and was appalled.)

I'm not sure if this holds true for most readers, but I actually don't read many books that I plan on reading.  I know that sounds confusing, but what I mean is that I tend to just read whatever the winds of chance send me.  I subscribe to the Library's RSS feed for new materials, and I generally get about 20% of my reading ideas from there (and I know this because I just checked my list, and six of the thirty I've read this year came from there.  That's enough math for this blog post.)  But the vast majority of reading I do comes from some form of word-of-mouth.  I'll hear an author on the radio, I'll read a blog post about an upcoming movie and spoil it by reading the book first, I'll bounce around Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" list or I'll simply get a book recommendation or "have you heard of?" from a friend.

So, I'm making a goal to start reading more books I actually want to read (by the way, I checked my list, and my "planned" reading stands at about 30%).  Which means I need to consider what books should go on that list.  This is separate and distinct from the list of books I'd like to like to read. That latter list includes:

1. Twilight - I know I'd be cool if I read it, but I just can't summon the will to want to. Plus, my sister read it and said it was for girls. So as a man of the male gender, I refuse.
2. War and Peace - Now this one properly goes under my list of books I wish I'd already read. It'd work well for literary one-upsmanship. "Well, I read War & Peace." Kinda like Brian Regan's "I walked on the moon" bit.
3. N.T. Wright's Christian Origins and the Question of God series.  2100 pages.  I love Bishop Wright, but this just isn't going to happen.
4. John Adams, by David McCullough.  It's too big.  It'd throw off my book-a-week pace.  But I could've gotten it at the Library Book Sale for $2 last fall.  Still kicking myself about that.  By the way, the miniseries was awesome.
5. Any random smattering of "Leadership"/"Career"/"Self-Improvement" titles.  Seems too much like work to me.
6. Moby Dick.  I've heard Melville is tedious, and I'm not into tedium.  I already read The Historian (not by Melville, but tedious).

It's odd that I'm having trouble coming up with titles for that list.  But off the top of my head, here are some books I'd like to read:

1. Slaughterhouse-five, by Kurt Vonnegut. Not sure why, but this one makes the list.
2. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. Mostly this feels like an obligation.
3. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. I've heard it's cool.
4. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.   Just because.
5. Emma, by Jane Austen.  My wife tells me that I cannot read this before she does.  Sounds like a race to me...
6. The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumass.  Because I loved The Count of Monte Cristo.
7. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stephenson.  Pirates.  Need I say more?
8. Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Elaine told me I should.
9. The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel.  Heard it's awesome.
10. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.

Hmm...I thought for sure I'd come up with more for this list.  Obviously I need help.  But if I take recommendations, then they're not ones I want to read.   Ah, I've got it.  You'll just be helping me remember titles I've been wanting to read.  That's the ticket!

Any recommends?

--- - ---

The IRS just informed me that they think I shorted them out of $2k on my 2007 return.  I'm fairly certain I didn't, and I blame TurboTax if I did.  So now I get the fun of sifting through my meticulously organized scattered records to figure out what happened. I do rather like how it took them fourteen months to figure this out.  I don't like the fact that I'll bet I end up having to pay.

--- - ---

Yes, I'm writing about strawberries again.  You've now missed out on Hood strawberries.  They're gone until next June.  But Albions are also really good, and they'll be at the markets for a few weeks at least.  The nice thing about Albions is that they last longer before going bad.  With Hoods, you've got basically 36 hours to use them, and then they're gone (and we made a bunch of Freezer Jam, which is awesome).  Albions are a little hardier.  And they're big and beautiful.  So pick some up!