The Man Booker Challenge

Last weekend marked 5 months in our new house in Issaquah.  Today I finally got motivated and stopped by the Issaquah Library on my way home to register for a library card.  Why it took me 6 months I can't explain, except to note that in Magnolia we literally lived across the street from the library and in 2.5 years I never made it to the library once.  This is embarassing to type.  I have been a book nerd since the approximate age of 6 years old.  Ask my parents!  I was always carring a book around.  I was an honors english literature major for crying out loud!  I got straight A's in English in college because I loved to read the books!  And here I am as an adult still reading, but choosing to re-read the same books I have had in my possession for years, or scrounging around my parent's bookshelves while visiting.

Maybe it was because our Magnolia rental always had a degree of impermanence to it.  We started living together there when we were only dating.  We started looking to purchase a house more than a year before we finally moved out.  After the first year, we knew any month could be our last month.  But this doesn't make sense.  Library books are easy to return. They don't imply permanence - on the contrary, library books are impermanent by their very nature.

Maybe it is because the books I know and love, and the few books I added to my collection over the past six or eight years I know are safe.  I know how these books make me feel, how I enjoy the stories and the authors' styles, even before I open the pages.  And with my work schedule (and before, my study schedule) I didn't have very much time to spend on my favorite hobby. I have learned to be cautious about making sure those precious moments are not spent with a book I don't want to finish, or get bored or tired of.  I don't want to be disappointed.

So, with my brand new library card in hand, I challenge myself to leave my comfort zone.  I will read new novels - or mostly new at least.  However, to ensure, to the best of my ability, that i choose books that will engage me, challenge me to rethink my world, to avoid novels that will bore me, tire me, or otherwise disappoint, I have chosen to read through the list of Man Booker Prize winners (and short list runners-up) from the first year of the award in 1969 through today, and out into the future. 

I don't expect these to be easy books.  I also don't expect to love every one of them.  But I do expect that they will - for a time- challenge me to rethink my view of the world.  And I will write to you about them.