Ok, so back on Tuesday I had mentioned in one of my bookish resolutions/goals that I wanted to start on a presidential reading challenge of some kind. Well here I am today starting the planning process of this challenge. š
If you’re curious … this is not some new and exciting idea. I’m not even entirely sure where I first heard about this idea … I’m sure it was some blog post I ran across at some point in time. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who to ultimately credit for this. Either way, there’s a lot of lists out there if you google “presidential reading challenge” It will bring up numerous blog posts about this. The Washington Post even did a profile on some of the various people in the blogosphere who are doing this challenge.
Regardless of where I first heard about this idea ….. there’s one blog in particular that has truly caught my eye. This dude is my true inspiration for this challenge.. He has undertaken the challenge to read more than one book on each president (because how can you really be all-encompassing by just choosing one book per president?) And part of me wants to read every single book he mentions …. the other part of me realizes that this probably won’t be a very realistic goal for me. But one can hope, right? He’s been at this for a little over 5 years and is just now starting out on Richard Nixon.
So. I am embarking on my own Presidential Reading Challenge. The verdict is still out on how many books I will read per president. But it will likely be more than 1 … considering I already have 2 George Washington books and I’m hovering my mouse over that “place order” button on my powells.com cart holding 4 more Washington books (the James Thomas Flexner 4 volume set) Let’s be honest, it would be hard to choose just one book on the big ones – Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, and the like …. and yet there’s that pretty decent stretch where I’m sure one book would suffice (presidents 8-15 … I’m looking at you guys).
I’m going to be reading in order, because my OCD wouldn’t let me do this any other way. And there’s no time line to this. This isn’t something I can finish in a year. This will span multiple years. I’m still unsure how things will go down. I may just totally run out of steam and give up before I ever really get started. But this is something that I’ve been toying with in my head for about the past year. Now is the time to put it in motion!!
I’m still trying to figure out if this is something I want to incorporate here or start a separate blog for. Non-fiction/presidential biographies are not my normal reading, so I’m not sure the audience that this blog has would really be interested in seeing my progress with this challenge. On the other hand, the idea of keeping a separate blog is a little daunting – it’s hard enough to keep this one up sometimes.
So there’s still a lot of kinks to work out in my grand plan (ha!) but in the mean time I’m going to have lots of fun planning out what I’ll read (IĀ love lists!) as well as obtaining the first few I for sure decide on.
P.S. – I totally just purchased the above mentioned 4 books š
Tales of a Book Addict 