Summer Summaries, Part 2: Summer Reading

Originally, I planned to write this entry about the library's Summer Reading Program. For those of you not in the know, that is a thing where children keep track of their reading in exchange for prizes. In the past, I have worked at libraries where the whole staff was expected to lose all sense of sanity and dignity in an effort to promote summer reading. At my current library, summer reading is still a Big Deal, but I am the only one planning and implementing it. While I've been insanely busy at times, I haven't been able to force anyone to dress up in silly costumes or engage the children in elaborate games of chance. So, my sanity and everyone's dignity are intact, which is cool, but yet again my awesome job has denied me a good story. (Good stories are one of the very few perks of soul-killingly bad work environments.) Instead, I'm going to tell you about my own personal summer reading. Is that a good story? Maybe not, but it's potentially more interesting than "...and then I made a Reading Log with some really neat clip art!"

It all started when, at some point in the past year, I seem to have decided that I wasn't quite nerdy enough. I don't know exactly how or why this happened. It wasn't a conscious decision. Clearly, being a former academic decathlete who completes logic puzzles for fun and is a librarian is more than enough nerdiness for most people, but I am not most people. I needed a project. A nerdtastic project.

So at the end of last year, the husband and I decided to read biographies of all the presidents. Which is a super way to increase one's nerd quotient, really, except that I accidentally upped it exponentially by getting excited about reading about some of the other people of the era as well. As it turns out, I read a George Washington bio and a Benjamin Franklin bio. Then while I was reading a summary of the events of 1776, I pulled out a replica of a map drawn by General Howe, and my nerd meter exploded. It was too much for me, and while I haven't given up on the concept, neither have I quite committed to taking home a book about president #2.

Then I figured out the problem. Yes, reading presidential biographies is nerdy, but it's not English major nerdy. I was too far out of my comfort zone. And that is why I started a quest to read all of the National Book Award winners. I started with The Man with the Golden Arm, which was the first winner in 1950. (I am a little bit ashamed to admit that I genuinely thought that book was about baseball. For the record, it is so not about baseball.) Then, in an act of craziness that I am still not entirely okay with, I skipped to the 2006 winner, The Echo Maker. I had been planning to read it before I started the project, and the Husband convinced me it would be dumb to wait the two years it will take me to get to this decade. But I have Book Chronology OCD from way back; believe me when I say that I did not discover The Truth About Stacey before learning about Kristy's Great Idea.

This project isn't a super-strict thing. I'm reading other things along the way. Already, though, I can feel my Nerd Power growing. Don't feel too threatened though; 1951's winner is The Complete Short Stories of William Faulkner. It's over 900 pages. Given that it's Faulkner, those 900 pages may contain 20 sentences total.

I may be writing about a new nerd project soon.