Crossing the Rubicon

After seeing a movie this past weekend in which a woman cooks her way through every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year's time, I have been intrigued by the possibility of using this rather moribund blog to set myself a deadline and monitor my progress.  Specifically, for the past year I have been trying to read more of the Great Books and their lesser kindred, the significant and important works of literature and non-fiction.

In the last half of 2008, I set myself the goal of reading 50 important novels in 6 months:  I scored 28.  In 2009, it was 50 important novels along with 50 important works of non-fiction:  in the first 8 months, I've only scored 12 novels and 6 non-fiction works.

So how to bring my reading and research to the next level:  two books a week, week in, week out?  Setting myself a deadline and writing about it seems like a program that will achieve the elusive ideal of working as part of a crew rather than as an individual, even if the other seven guys in the shell are somewhere out in the aether of the internet; even if no one reads my reactions to the books I select, the possibility that someone might is motivation to keep to the schedule.

Of course, nobody is going to find David Hume as fascinating as Julia Child's coq au chambertin, or Stendahl as intriguing as  boeuf bourgignon, other than myself, I suppose.  But the American side of the web may surprise me; people are always telling me that I should give my countrymen a bit more credit.

I've chosen September 1st as my start date.  It seems a good day to commence ambitious projects with potentially dire consequences.