2007 Reading List

Once again the new year rings in when I’m not ready for it; I wrote to Nancy Pelosi to demand that the continuing resolution we passed be deemed to have included an extension of 2006. She must not have the power to do that. Saint Barack Obama would!

I have a book list of sorts for 2007, but it’s rather a joke…. My church led a “66 in ‘06″ program last year, publishing reading plans for getting through all 66 books of the Bible in 2006. I got through Leviticus 6 myself. Maybe this year.

But being a smart ass, I wondered if there’s any way I could tackle 77 book-type books in 2007. Obviously the answer is no, as it just took me 2 hours to read 20 pages of Heretics of Dune (although I maintain that Frank Herbert is either the most brilliant writer of his genre in the history of the written word or he was perpertually high). But wouldn’t it be interesting to at least set forth a list of 77 books for the year and see what I do with them?

Then I figured I should give myself some leeway: 77 slots on my list, but only fill 70 of them. Certainly I will purchase books this year with every intention of reading them immediately; I think some are already on the way from Amazon. So there will be 77 slots. Maybe I’ll fill them all in time; maybe some of them will always be empty. Like the Order of the Garter, limited to 77 (or 25 or whatever that is). Not so much like the Order of the Garter. Who cares. It’s my list, and there will be 77 slots. Like the 77 elders of the whoever in the Bible. Or not. Whatever analogy works best, that’s what it will be like.

Perhaps it will be a perpetual list, instead of something I revise each year. Revisions will be constant. If so, then I should pick a number that means something to me; 77 ain’t it. Maybe an even 100. Or an odd 100. Five is my number, but 55 is too few and it doesn’t mean anything to me anyway.

Oh–revisions will be constant. I’ve already tossed out the C.S. Lewis daily devotional in favor of another one (the one I could find today and read while it’s still January 01). But herein follows the list as it stood when Nancy Pelosi refused to stop the calendar at the start of this new year:

• The Message Remix (The Bible in Contemporary Language)
• Heretics of Dune
• Risk: Are You Willing to Trust God with Everything?
• Do What You Are
• Prayer: Too Busy Not to Pray
• Ordering Your Private World
• 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (Like Me)
• Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties And Thirties
• The Constitution of the United States
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
• Living Simply Through the Day: Spiritual Survival in a Complex Age
• The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life
• Robert’s Rules of Writing
• Spiritual Journaling: Recording Your Journey Toward God
• Circumstances Beyond Our Control: Poems
• Page After Page
• Freedom from the Tyranny of the Urgent
• The Lost Gospel Q: The Original Sayings of Jesus
• All the King’s Men
• Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome
• The Hobbit or There and Back Again
• The Rule of Saint Benedict
• How to Say It
• The House: The History of the House of Representatives
• The Silver Chair
• When God Whispers Your Name
• A Year with C. S. Lewis
• The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?
• Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
• The Last Jihad
• Latin: An Introductory Course Based on Ancient Authors
• What’s the Matter With Kansas?
• Make a Life, Not Just a Living
• The Abolition of Man
• The Trial
• Paul: The Mind of the Apostle
• The Fountainhead
• Pontius Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man
• The Satanic Verses: A Novel
• Banish Your Belly
• The Iliad
• The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
• Becoming A Person Of Influence
• The Pilgrim’s Progress
• The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make
• Financial Freedom: Seven Secrets to Reduce Financial Worry
• Your Personality Tree
• The Great War: American Front
• Catch-22
• Strange Pilgrims
• Absalom, Absalom!
• The Man Without a Country & Other Stories
• The Loom of Language
• The Relativity of Wrong
• The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
• The Autumn of the Patriarch
• Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds
• Dollars & $ense: A Christian Guide To Financial Planning
• Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
• Jesus on Money: Book 1–Charting a New Course
• The 9/11 Commission Report
• Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties
• John Adams
• The Real Jimmy Carter
• Captains and the Kings
• The Art of War
• The Sibling Society
• Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
• Nothing’s Too Small to Make a Difference
• Ulysses