Challenge update!

Well, four weeks ago I was very optimistic about how I was doing. At that point I had 50 books left to read in about eight weeks, which was pretty crazy but still felt at least theoretically possible to me. And then I got sick for about a week, and work blew up, and I got sick again, and most of all the election cycle got to a point where I basically found it impossible to focus on reading. So now it's 26 days until the election (THANK GOD), but I actually have 53 books to read, because I'm in a book club and so have added a few titles to the list, and clearly I am not going to manage to read two books a day for the next three and a half weeks.

So! I have revised my goals. The short-term goal is to reach triple digits in books by Election Day, which means reading a minimum of 17 books in the next three and a half weeks - ambitious, but doable, especially since I'm halfway through two books currently. I think it's especially achievable since the other thing I realized this past week is that I basically can't try to read anything that's too dark or sad or deals with certain subjects in realistic subjects until after I know that we've all done our civic duty and saved the republic. So like, I'm not reading the novels set during WWI or WWII, or that I know end badly and instead am focusing on the lighter books still on my list for the next four weeks. I am saving all of the darker for after the election, a time when hopefully I will be able to breathe a bit easier and live inside a fictional or historical hellscape without triggering nightmares in my reality.

Once I hit 100 books, I'll still have 36 books left to read, and at that point my goal will be to finish all of those by Christmas, so that I can receive books as Christmas presents on a clean slate. The numbers work out so that I need to read approximately 5 books a week until Christmas, which is obviously quite ambitious, and will require me to find my focus again. But I think I can do it, and it certainly would be helpful for me to spend less time on twitter and more time reading especially right now. So let's see how I do :D

Project Update: What to do When You’re Not Reading

I created this blog and this project because I wanted something concrete and completely unrelated to national politics to focus on in the ramp up to the election in November, something that I was in control of and had a direct say over. But in 100 days, the U.S. will have either chosen Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as President, and there are some simple, straightforward steps I wanted to lay out that we can each take to ensure that we elect Hillary Clinton.

1. Register to Vote.

This is the “make sure you put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others” step. Now is the time to either register to vote or to check that you are registered to vote at your current address, and to confirm your polling location. If you may not be in your city or town on Election Day, take a look at what your state’s requirements are for voting by absentee ballot if your state doesn’t allow early voting for everyone. Have a plan for when you’ll vote on Election Day (before/after work or school), and check to see if you live in a state with new voting restrictions in place—17 states have new restrictions that were not in place in 2012, and while we’ve been fighting back against them in many states, being informed about possible changes now will help you be prepared to exercise your right to vote.

2. Donate your time or money (or both!) to the Clinton Campaign.

Once you’ve double-checked that you’re registered to vote for Clinton in November, the next step is donating to the campaign. If you can afford to donate money, that is obviously incredibly helpful and important, because running an effective Get Out The Vote (GOTV) organization in fifty states isn’t cheap. But not everyone can afford to do that, and many people who are able to donate money also want to volunteer their time. And here’s one of the secrets about volunteering your time for a campaign: not only are you directly helping to elect your candidate, it’s also much harder to get lost in the anxiety about an election when you’re out there doing the work. It takes you out of the echo chamber of the media’s horse race and puts you in touch with the nuts and bolts of the organization’s work. Plus, once we hit the fall, the main focus of the GOTV drive is to get in touch with voters who are democrats and therefore likely voters to support them in getting to the polls. This means you’ll get to have conversations with people who are already on our team, rather than attempting to convince swing voters or people who have previously voted Republican. It’s you doing your part to help everyone we can check off Step 1 of this post so they can go out and vote in November.

3. Have conversations with the people in your life who aren’t firm Clinton supporters.

Does having conversations with people who supported Sanders in the primaries and aren’t fully on board yet, or Republicans and Independents who don’t like Trump but aren’t sure if they can vote for Clinton, sound like fun to you? Great! This is also an extremely important step, in both swing states and in safe blue states, because the margins of her victory also matter (especially when it comes to down ballot races—more on that in a bit). I confess that this particular point is one I don’t have a ton of experience with, because I live in a very blue state and my family is full of Democrats. But having in-person conversations with people you love about why it matters beyond Democrats vs. Republicans that we not elect Donald Trump is incredibly important. I would recommend looking at President Obama’s speech at the DNC to get a sense of how to frame a conversation like this: it’s not about the differences between the parties, it’s about competing visions of who we are and what we want this country to be. And frankly, this weekend Trump has done an exceptional job of making that difference as stark as possible.

4. Support Democrats in down ballot races.

There are two levels of victory we can achieve this fall. The first is to elect Hillary Clinton as president, which will protect us from a Donald Trump presidency and strengthen the progressive wing of the Supreme Court. That is vital, but as an isolated achievement it’s also a fairly defensive-minded victory: it protects the advancements of President Obama’s administration and prevents the damage of a Trump presidency, but that’s not all we’re fighting for. And in order for Hillary Clinton to be able to put her plans into action, we need to take back the Senate and increase our numbers in the House.

One of the most satisfying things about supporting either Senate or House candidates is that a little goes a long way, especially in comparison with Presidential campaigns. One great resource for identifying candidates you want to support is Emily’s List, which works to get pro-choice Democratic women elected to office. Electing women candidates changes the composition and functioning of government in many ways, not least of which by making a representative government truly more representative of the country it serves. And you can get even more bang for your buck by supporting women candidates for office in swing states, because they will support and coordinate with Clinton’s campaign in winning the state up and down the ballot.

5. Do the work you can, and otherwise focus on your own life.

This piece of advice will probably come as no surprise, given that it’s the basis of this blog, but there is a very big difference between doing something about this election, and simply worrying about it. I am as guilty as anyone of going down a politics spiral, but unless you work in politics or are volunteering full-time for a campaign, compartmentalize your engagement in this election as much as you can. Give it your full attention when you are volunteering for a campaign or researching which down ballot candidates you wish to give money to or engaging in a good faith conversation with someone you know about voting for Clinton. But try to minimize the amount of time you spend following what shameful thing Trump has said or done on any given day, or chasing new poll numbers for swing states. No matter how much the media wants you to follow the election minute by minute, you don’t need to spend your time doing that, and it won’t change the result of the election if you follow every twist and turn. Take action in the ways that you can, and otherwise shut it off. I recommend reading a book (or 132 of them). Trump is a nightmare, but you don’t owe it to anyone to let him increase your anxiety or stress, beyond doing what you can to elect Clinton and defeat him.

Okay, enough with the politics! Time for me to get reading :) 

2016 Master List

EDITED: So this is now the list of 98 books I read between March 24, 2016 and December 31, 2016. It's not all of the books I read in 2016, because I didn't include any of the books I read in the first three months of the year (or any of my rereads), but it's everything I read as a part of this project, with links to all of the corresponding posts. 

Here is the list of the 132 books I am attempting to read between now and November 8th! The first 106 books on the list are fiction, which means that a little less than a quarter of the books are nonfiction, so I will be planning to read about one nonfiction book a week. In addition, 33 of the books are marked with a W notation after them; I expect to need a week (at least) of reading time to finish each of those books, so when figuring out what to read next, I'll need to balance steady progress on those bigger/more challenging books with daily reading of faster books. The good news is that there's enough variety in the list that I should always be able to find something I'm in the mood for on any given day; the bad news is that's because there are SO MANY BOOKS TO READ. However, I'm feeling very optimistic as I get started! Let's see how long that positive thinking lasts :D

I will be updating this post as I make my way through the list and marking books when I've finished them. There is no rhyme or reason to the order of the books beyond fiction 1-106 and nonfiction 107-132.

List of books is under the cut!

A Perfectly Normal Response to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

There hasn't been much press coverage about this, but apparently there's a presidential election this year in the United States! I know, I also was shocked when I realized this, because it has in no way dominated the national conversation for months, even though the general election isn't until November 8th. Not to worry though, because I'm sure that the 230 days between now and Election Day will pass by easily and peacefully and we'll all be free from constant anxiety and fear that the U.S. could do something REALLY DUMB like elect Donald Trump as President.

:||||||||

So listen. I can't control what happens in this election beyond canvassing and contributing to the Get Out The Vote campaign of whichever Democratic nominee wins the party's nomination and then voting for him or her on November 8th (along with the down ballot Democratic nominees in my state and city). But what I CAN attempt to control is how I spend the next eight months of my life, and how quickly the time passes. Barring the ability to put myself into a coma-like stasis until November 9th and waking up to discover that the country did in fact vote for four more years of a president who doesn't terrify me, my best bet is to give myself incredibly ambitious deadlines for projects that only matter to me, for pride. Because I don't know about anyone else, but nothing makes time go by faster for me than a looming deadline staring me in the face.

I have a couple of different projects in the pipeline to get me through this year, but the one this blog focuses on is BOOKS. I currently have 132 unread books in my possession, either in paper or e-book form. There are 230 days between now and Election Day 2016, or just a bit short of 33 weeks. My goal over the next 33 weeks is to read all 132 of those books, or four books per week.

This is ambitious but also possible: I am a fast reader, and at least 40 of those books are novellas or romance novels or YA novels, all of which I can read at a much faster clip than nonfiction or many other kinds of novels. However, a fair number of them are also books which will be more or less impossible for me to read in less than a week, given that I have a full-time job and am also working on writing my own novel this year. (We all deal with stressful national elections in our own special ways, okay.) So each week I'll need to read both shorter, faster books over a day or two while also chipping away at longer and/or more challenging reads.

I am also giving myself permission to stop reading any book after a hundred pages if I'm not enjoying it; the purpose of this challenge is to get through my to-read pile, not to punish myself for a book I bought years ago and have never read. I will also be reviewing each book I read (or abandon) and giving them a letter grade.

Also, the starting point of 132 books already includes seven books that haven't been released yet but which I know I will be buying and reading, but the odds that I will go eight months without buying unanticipated additional books are as low as I hope the GOP's odds of winning this November are. Hopefully I can limit the number of additional books bought, or keep a book wishlist and then go on a huge buying spree post-Election Day to celebrate :D

I think that's it! Tomorrow I'll be posting the list of all 132 books I will be attempting to read between now and November 8th, and after that I'll need to get reading. /o/