At some point during the summer I decided to start using my lack of employment for good -- or personal enrichment, at least -- and went looking for a top-100 books list to plow through by spring. I found this one: [link] which aligned with what I thought the top books were and what I wanted to read. I started with the first book, War and Peace, in August.

It's December. I'm still unemployed. I still haven't finished War and Peace.

I need to read more. But between the tivo and internet, I only tend to read when I travel.

I read at lunch, on BART, and sometimes a little before I go to bed.

Um, I read YOUSE GUYS.

I read a lot more when I commuted on public transport. I was better informed because I read the paper in the morning. I usually read a book on the way home. Now, I've been driving or walking for the last 8 years, not so conducive to reading.

Now and then I will finish whatever I'm reading and nothing in my To Be Read pile will be immediately appealing and I'll be caught up on Entertainment Weekly and Ellery Queen and I just won't read anything for a day or two. It always feels very weird.

Orrin Hatch wrote a Chanukah song. As a "gift to the Jews." [link]

My dad was just telling me about that at dinner.

I consume as many words as I did as a teen, I'm sure. They're just all on a glowing screen, and I talk back to many of them. And my narrative fix comes from the teevee.

I should have learnt a foreign language (or three) while I was jobless.

It's December. I'm still unemployed. I still haven't finished War and Peace.

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to pace the three big ones -- Don Quixote, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, and War and Peace -- throughout the year so I don't get bogged down. Don Quixote is first because it's what started the whole idea. But it's pretty daunting.