In order to gauge my progress this month on War & Peace, I thought I would take a before photo. This is basically where I am starting out, and by the end of the month I hope my bookmark is at the very end of the book. Even though I am now past the 500 page mark it doesn't seem like I am terribly far into the book, does it? Now that I have shown the world where I stand, there is nothing left to do but to read on or embarrass myself terribly by making false claims of my reading. My grand (and overly optimistic) plan of reading 50 pages a day is not going to happen, however. Three days into the month and I see that I am a slower reader (with this book anyway--imagine really small print please...and look at all those pages...and the paper is thin, too) than I imagined. I promise I will do my best not to post about this every day of the month--I could give you a daily reading summary, but that may be a bit of a bore. But I am still hoping to finish by the end of the month. It would be nice to finish the book in two weeks, but I'm not going to hold my breath over that one!
Although Tolstoy is going to be my prime source of reading entertainment this month, I will still be dipping a bit into a few other books. I hope to read a chapter a day of David Copperfield (so far so good on that one). It may take me 2-1/2 months to get through it, but it is sort of nice to savor a book and read it slowly. I also am reading Benjamin Black's Christine Falls, which so far I think I am going to like, though I am not very far into it (it has a very different feel to it than The Sea by the way). This is a reader's copy, so I hope to get through it soon. I have several other reader's copies as well, so there will be a few more popping up here eventually. I thought it would be good to have something to read that was very short as well this month. A while back I bought Michael Dirda's Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments. These are all very short, and it will be nice to have a little something else to pick up and put down as the mood calls for it. Books about books are nearly always something pleasing to read and I will of course share any interesting bits! What are you reading this month?