What happened?

Yeah, to all that reading we were doing?  I don't know, but we have certainly slowed down considerably.  We went at a good clip there for awhile. 

Just to recap  - we started out with an ambitious goal - I was going to read 25 books, Ernie was going to read 25 books and we were going to both read another 25.  At last count I have finished 18 books on my list, partially read 1 (if you remember I did not finish Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford because it was 3 frickin' books -- I did finish 1 of the three) and am currently 1/2 way through The Adventures of Augie March which I'm hoping to finish by the end of next week.  Ernie has completed 21 of the books he picked for his list, and we have jointly read 16.  Then that joint list sort of turned into "let's take turns" so I have read an additional 2 from that list while Ernie read one more on that list.  So for those of us keeping score that makes Sandra - 36 1/2 books and Ernie -  38 books-- but it's not about that, right?

This reading project is kind of like running a marathon (or for
me 1/2 marathon).  Some of it is lots of fun and some of it
is just about putting one foot in front of the other - or rather
reading one word after another!

We scratched Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man from the joint list as our Christmas present to ourselves and while I have Ulysses on my list Ernie decided since it was the NUMBER 1 pick of the Modern Library list he would read it too.  I shouldn't say "too" because after listening to him bad mouth this book for the last three weeks I've decided I'm not going to try it at this time.   I've decided I'm just not that ambitious!

We are actually still enjoying the project even though it may go on for some time longer than we had originally anticipated!  There have been one or two real stinkers -- we just can't recommend James Joyce even though he is supposed to be some great writer, apparently we are just too provincial to appreciate him--but for the most part we have found some real gems we wouldn't have found otherwise. At some point we will be done though and then we can read some of those books people are always recommending to us when we tell them what we are doing.  Although you are going to have to tell us again your recommendations.  So anyway, we'll have more thoughts on more books soon!  Hopefully....................