I certainly enjoy a good roller coaster

Whew. What a whirlwind the last 2 ½ days have been. While driving to Good Tequilas out at Grand Prairie in Peoria on Friday night, I was thinking about how excited I was to see Hannah for the first time in months. I never imagined that simple Mexican dinner would result in me embarking on a journey that could very well take years.

One hundred books. Some short and some long. Some new and most old. A hundred different collections of words on pages. Each telling an elaborate story as envisioned by their authors. This is going to be one hell of a roller coaster ride.

You can see the list and learn how it was created by clicking on the links above. The words on those pages should give you some insight into my life and what I’m attempting to do like the words on the pages I’m about to read will give me insight into the author’s life.

Several things strike me about the list. One is how many books I have never heard of. There are millions, if not billions of books in the world, and I have read hundreds and heard of thousands more, but here is a list of the supposed 100 best and a nice chunk I have never heard of. Something about this picture isn’t right.

I'm excited about some of the books I get to read. I'm also loathing others. War and Peace? Really? That book is what, 7000 pages long? Granted, I've heard great things from Jess about Tolstoy's other book on the list, Anna Karenina, so who knows, maybe I'm in for a treat. Jess keeps bitching about Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights by the Bronte sisters, so that's scaring me a little. Little Women doesn't excite me much either. For some reason old episodes of Little House on the Prairie keep popping into my head whenever I think about it. No idea why. I am excited however about The Maltese Falcon, which Jess explained to me as a 1920's crime drama. I'm also excited about reliving my childhood and reading Charlotte's Web. Ulysses is the other book I'm looking forward to reading because of the four books that appear on all ten lists (The Great Gatsby, On The Road and 1984 being the others), it's the only one I haven't read.

Another thing that strikes me about the list is that I’ve already read 12 of them. I am going to reread them, no worries. Of these 12 books, I read seven of them in high school as part of Mr. Clark’s dual credit English class. Mr. Clark was by far my favorite teacher in high school and taught me to view the English language in a whole new light. Beyond that however, he taught me about life and how to live it. Many others will repeat my sentiments if asked. I didn’t realize until now though, the books that I sometimes loathed reading for his class are in fact some of the best in history.

Which brings me to the next part of this post. As Jess describes in her post, the book we read is chosen by the other person. We then switch and read the book the other person was reading so we can have discussions about them after we finish both books. We already own 16 of the books and have them sitting in a stack on top of one of our bookshelves. The book I have chosen for Jess is On The Road by Jack Kerouac. During my time in Mr. Clark’s English class, we were required to pick a book off his list, read it, and write a report about it. One time after class, or maybe it was after school, I don’t remember, I had a conversation with Mr. Clark about a trip to Europe I was planning for the summer. He gave me his copy of On The Road and told me to read it instead of any of the books on the list. The trip to Europe never materialized, but the impact that book had on me remains to this day. The copy that Jess is reading is the copy I was given by Mr. Clark. I felt the book was a fitting beginning to this journey.

The book Jess has chosen for me is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I have never read a Vonnegut book and this has irked Jess ever since we started dating. I am halfway through the book and I already regret waiting this long to read any of his works.

So here I am, at 7 o’clock in the morning, drinking a PBR, smoking a Camel and writing a blog post about reading books. Regardless if no one ever reads this blog, I can go to bed at the end of the day knowing that at the end of this journey, I will be better educated and better cultured than I was when I started. So ladies and gentlemen, please make sure your seatbelts are fastened and any loose articles are stowed away, the ride is about to begin.

- Frank