NaNoReMo 2017

For a number of years the excellent John Wiswell of The Bathroom Monologues has led the charge on National Novel Reading Month (NaNoReMo). The basic idea is that you will read a novel by the 31st of March that you've been meaning to read for too long and putting off. Usually it's some work on the shelf that it's never been quite the right time for, or that classic tome you always said you'd get around to...but didn't. For the month of March we set aside excuses and read the thing.

When I was fifteen I made my 'to read' list. Of the first five books I added, I've read them all, except one, which I am now going to finally vanquish in 2017.

Atypically it is not a new author for me, which I usually try to check off for a NaNoReMo. Maybe that's why I put it aside - or perhaps it's a fear derived from the buildup over all these years of folks telling me how fabulous it is, which will instead lead to disappointment. Either way, I'm going to finally read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

I encountered him in high school, first through the short story 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings' Freshman year and then with the novel 'Love in the Time of Cholera' as a Senior. Both were great.

I never owned a copy of Solitude until this past year, so, admittedly, there are books on my shelf that are maybe more deserving. But since this has been on the top of my 'to read' list for fifteen years, I feel as though it's an acceptable offering to the gods of literary... something or other.

Wish me luck.