The 300

I finish reading a novel about once a month, according to my entries on Goodreads. That might seem light, but it's about as much as my current day-to-day routine can handle.

That got me thinking; If I extrapolate a book per month over the next 25 years -- at which time I'd be at retirement age -- that would come out to about 300 books. So I'll use that as a ballpark figure, 300, to say how much reading I have left in the tank.

Of course I'll have read tons more than that! But I like the number. It's very SPARTA! Thinking of it in finite terms helps romanticize what I want from future reading. Helps give it an agenda. It has to be top-notch -- new classics in contemporary lit, the canon I've yet to read, an occasional reread, and, of course the flat-out-fun reads. 

When I grow up, I want to be able to talk books, writers, good prose, and, yes, good literary criticism.

Here's the first batch of The 300:  

Of Mice & Men, Steinbeck
Moon Palace, Paul Auster
The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
Ask The Dust, John Fante 

Chronicles of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Fall, Albert Camus