Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I started plotting some new big, hairy audacious goals for 2013. My opinion on big, hairy audacious goals is you haven’t set them right if they don’t both terrify you and excite you at the same time. For that reason, I have a note on my wall next to them that says, “Make it happen.”
As everyone I’ve ever lived with can attest, I love to curl up with a book. I am also one of those readers who refuse to give up on any book. Even the books I hate, I will trudge page by page to the end. So, I decided that a personal goal for 2013 was going to be to read all the “good” books. To do that I first had to define a “good book.” I settled on the following: winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, winners of the National Book Award for Fiction, Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels, and Time Magazine’s Top 100 Books of All Time.
Being a total nerd, I created a color-coded spreadsheet of the title, author, which of the categories the book fell into, and if I could recall reading the book in the past. I understood the craziness of this goal once the spreadsheet was complete. The spreadsheet contained 280 “good books.” Of which about 75% of the books I don’t have a recollection of reading (I’m still thinking that this figure can’t be right). But that’s what big, hairy audacious goals are about, right? A goal that seems in reach, but also seems a little crazy. While I doubt I can read all 280 279 of them by the close of 2013, but I know it’s possible to complete it by mid-2014. (Correction 12/1: There are 280 lines in the spreadsheet, but one of those is the header. Which means 279 books.)
To make the goal a reality, I’m putting it out to the world. Tonight I finished book #1: Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow. If you want to root me along, I’ll post my progress book by book on social media.
My challenge to you is to come up with at least one big, hairy, audacious goal for 2013. I’d love it if you would share it below.
Photo via » Zitona « (Some Rights Reserved)
