It’s the New Year and everyone else is doing resolutions, so I guess it’s my turn. Hopefully I’ll succeed in completing at least two of these.
1. Read at least 12 books
When I was a kid, I full out LOVED reading. Third grade was spent as the nerd that read during recess with giant glasses and a full retainer to accentuate my status of dorkiest child imaginable. I continued reading as I got older, although mostly just one or two Michael Crichton books per year (plus the cliff notes for whatever book we were assigned at school), but as movies and video games beautifully murdered my attention span, books fell to the back burner – eventually disappearing from my to-do list entirely.
Well, it’s time for that to end. I miss reading; I genuinely do. My girlfriend Laura used to read quite a bit before we happened, and as we happily hurl ourselves into “coupliest couple ever” what better way to do that than to start a two person book club? I’m aiming low with only one book per month in hopes of actually meeting the goal for once, so we’ll see how it goes.
Right now the tentative list is pretty small. We’re kicking off with A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole – allegedly one of the funniest books of all time. We also plan to read at least one of my cousin Kaye’s romance novels, leaning towards Menu for Romance as the key target (though I might have to make Laura read Stand-In Groom to catch up). I’m also hoping to squeeze in a Michael Crichton novel, a Stephen King short story collection, and maybe the first Harry Potter.
If you have any recommendations for easy reading, throw them out there. My crippled attention span has led to me being a horrifically slow reader since I often find myself getting distracted by one small detail, allowing my mind to wander while I continue “reading”, and then realizing I haven’t been paying attention at all so that I have to backtrack to the last thing I actually remember happening. Recommendations under 300 pages are welcome.
2. Budget a little
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m addicted to buying DVD’s. Right now, from Black Friday through Christmas, I have about forty DVD’s sitting on my fireplace mantle that I haven’t even TOUCHED. I’ve recently suspended my Netflix account to force me to watch them, and after that I have a bunch of old favorites I need Laura to watch for the sake of our relationship. Fortunately she also loves movies, so this won’t be a problem and should save a considerable amount of money.
3. Write More
I know Bullshish has been dissipating since June-ish (excluding Horrorfest), and it’s not something I’m proud of. My life no longer revolves solely around watching a movie and talking about it, so it’s inevitable that the movie reviews will die down to only one per week on the latest theatrical release, but my hope is that I’ll be able to kick SuperBull into high gear as I ramble about my brilliant opinions on Taco Bell, board games, and the books we’re reading.
I also really, really, really need to get back to my script writing, though I’m fumbling through about eighteen different writing ideas, from webisodes to marketing a slasher movie game, and haven’t quite decided which idea will be my baby for a while which brings me to #4…
4. Pick a project
I need to edit Script 1 to be more taut. I need to finish Script 2 before I start the preliminary steps of Script 3 and 4 simultaneously. I need to sit down and make myself write.
Here’s to 2010!
January 3rd, 2010 at 8:35 pm
I think those are some pretty great resolutions for the new year… and 12 doesn’t seem like that low of a goal as far as books go. And I’ll see if I can’t make some suggestions for additional books… I will tell you this about Harry Potter, the books only get better… I don’t remember making it all the way through book one on my first attempt, but once I got to book three.. I finished the rest of the series in about 3 months (I started just before they published the last book) – and those are some big books (though not difficult to read)…there’s a vampire book I read on vacation whose name I’m going to try to remember.. it was a fun book (and the vampires slept like the dead during the day and would burn in the sunshine – so I think you might be okay with that).
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:48 pm
I’ll back up Sarah on what she said about Harry Potter. The first two books are kinda childish, but starting with book three I quickly found myself getting hooked. The writing only gets better with each book. I recommend some of Dennis LeHane’s books. They feel very cinematic, which is probably why they get turned into films. Shutter Island was one of the funnest books I’ve ever read.
January 4th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
” Third grade was spent as the nerd that read during recess with giant glasses and a full retainer to accentuate my status of dorkiest child imaginable.”
Um, what to say about that description???
I would recommend Janet Evonavich – one of the Stephanie Plum mysteries – they aren’t heavy mystery (Pat Cornwell) and she has quite a sense of humor. Of course I listen to her books on CD since Lorelei King is such an excellent reader with quite a range of voices and accents. Mike and I nearly ran off the road last weekend we got to laughing so hard. Perhaps you could “read” one of her books that way on a trip and then reading a hard copy of another book would be more fun since you could hear the voices in your head – oh, wait – you probably already have too many voices in your head.