New Year's Resolutions

A few days ago I counted the books I had "on the run," that is, books that I had started reading, had not finished, and had not chucked into the "never going to finish" or "not worth the effort" piles. Some were books I owned, and some were from the library. By the way, our local library system, the Pikes Peak Library District, is very nice. There is a small branch more or less across the street from me, up at the Village Center shopping center, and the much larger East Branch is only a couple of miles away on Union Boulevard.

I had sixteen books going, not counting the NIV Study Bible, which I began on November 1, 2007, under a program which will have me completing it on October 31, 2008. Sixteen! Some I had started a long time ago, and had not touched in months. Others I had been reading at the rate of a chapter or so a day, for a greater or lesser period of time. And a few had only recently been started.

Therefore, my first New Year's resolution is this:

Read these 16 books [on an attached list], plus the prescribed parts of the Bible, before buying any other book.

I understand this to mean that I will not only not buy another book, but that I will also not withdraw any from the library, nor will I start any of the other books (read or unread) in my collection.

Thanks to this resolution, I have already been able to diminish the disorder in my house, as I shelved a number of books I had taken down, with the idea of reading them soon. Now I have acknowledged I won't read them any time soon, so back on the shelves they go!

This profusion of books is partly due to the networking or referral system on which I read. That is, a couple of months ago I was reading Paul Theroux's travel classic The Old Patagonian Express. In the course of the book, Theroux mentioned that he was reading The Adventure of A. Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allan Poe, and, later, that he read and enjoyed Boswell's Life of Johnson. So I found my copy of the complete works of Poe and set it aside. Then I got Boswell out of my (incomplete) set of the Great Books of the Western World, and put it next to my bed.

I also read Wittgenstein's Poker recently. This is a fascinating little book about a confrontation between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper on October, 25, 1946, at King's College, Cambridge (the one whose choir one often hears at Christmas time). That led me to get out the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Now all of those books are back in their rightful places on the shelves.

My other resolutions are:

2. Maintain weight in the range of 170-175 pounds.

3. Exercise regularly, including the walking program, workout tapes, and yoga.

4. Practice meditation.

5. Eliminate short-term debt.

6. Complete PMP [Project Management Professional] certification.

Today I finished the first of the books on the list, The Ultimate Weight Solution, by Dr. Phil McGraw. I found this book for $2.00 in the bookshop at the East Branch library (proceeds go to the library), and it was in very good shape: no highlighting or underlining. Reading it has obviously been in pursuit of my resolution # 2, although McGraw also talks about exercise and meditation.

McGraw's book isn't bad, for the kind of thing it is. A lot of it is the kind of commensensical advice that seems inane, but is all too easy to forget in the stress of daily living. Set realistic goals, don't expect miracles, make it easy to do the right thing, eliminate excuses - that sort of thing. I'll probably write more about this on another occasion.

Oh, since mid-October I have lost about 30 pounds. I am now down around 175, on my 70.5-inch frame, and it is a far more comfortable weight for me than what I had been maintaining for the past several years. So I think it's important to maintain it until it is really stable.

And now I have another 15 books to read.