We all like books right?

There is so much great work out there to read and I always find myself stricken with the same agonizing decision every time I reach the end of a book…now what?

With so many to choose from, my usual process is to go through our shelves and make a stack of 10 – 15 books that are potentials for my next adventure. The process of narrowing it down to one can be rather stressful as I want to read everything; it seems like they all have the possibility of being the greatest thing I’ve ever read. Sometimes my way of picking my book happens through a process of elimination after reading the first 5 pages of each book in the stack and eventually ending up at the winner…this process can potentially take hours. Other times I’ve pulled book titles out of a hat, flipped a coin, asked for reviews/suggestions from friends or picked one blindly out of the pile. All of these methods seem to work and I usually end up with something that is perfect for that moment in time - but it’s a new year and I’ve already thrown caution to the wind by uprooting my life , moving back to my homeland of New Brunswick and taking on an exciting new position here at Goose Lane Editions so I figured I may as well change up how I pick books to read as well.

My new method…I am reading from A-Z. I am going to start with a book written by an “A” author and work my way through the alphabet. I also decided to make my challenge a little more exciting by stimulating my inner art/design nerd and creating a bookmark for each book I read this year. It is going to be a tough challenge for sure as we are more than halfway through January now and I am just getting started but I’m ready for the challenge and now that I have publicized this task in the blogosphere it will be more of an epic fail if I don’t make it to the end by the end of 2012.

For my “A” book I will be reading “The Year of the Flood” by the always-great Margaret Atwood. I have slowly begun the process of picking my books for each author but welcome any feedback or suggestions that anyone may have. I especially hope someone has a suggestion for an “X” author since I’m not having much luck finding anything under that letter so far.

I am really looking forward to the upcoming year of great reads and (fingers crossed) some great artwork as well.

Until next time, happy reading!