Oh happy day! A farewell to the Italian

To quote Paulo, "O! giorno felice!"

I have finished reading Ann Radcliffe's gothic romance, The Italian.

One down, 1122 to go. And it only took me two weeks to read. Ouch.

Great book, however. I very much enjoyed it. Once I got the hang of the genre and the strategies it entails, I really got caught up in the story, the characters and especially Radcliffe's vivid descriptions of the settings. Wonderfully written, with plenty of Shakespearean tropes thrown in.

After despairing that I was only reading about four pages per day of this extremely dense, 400-page book (it is, in fact, a collection of the three books in the original trilogy), I decided I had to batten down the hatches and get reading.

And I have to say, Racliffe reads much better when you take a couple of hours per sitting to sink deeply into her world. I would highly recommend this book to anyone out there. It's a neat introduction to 18th Century writing, to gothic romances and to reading in general.

Next up for me, book number 2: Yvonne Fern's Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation. This one should be a breeze after Radcliffe.

I'm enjoying the reading but life's getting in the way

I'm averaging about four pages per day on Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, book one in my 1123 book journey. That means this 410-page volume will take me approximately 102 days to finish.

At this rate, I'll be reading three to four books per year. Which means I'll finish my reading list when I'm well over 400 years old.

Hmmm... That doesn't seem like a good bet, does it?

I can't blame the book. It's great. I love the melodrama and the writing is superb. The Shakespearean references are a lot of fun and this Schedoni guy is fantastic.

It's just that my life right now doesn't leave a lot of time for reading. It's summer so I walk to and from work every day rather than spending 15 to 30 minutes each way sitting, reading, on a bus. I've also got stuff to do on my lunch hours so there goes some more prime reading time.

Evenings are spent outside in the garden, walking the dog or working on my own writing rather than curled up in front of the fire with a book under my nose.

So I'm at about four pages per day.

I'll get through, no doubt, but it will take time. My only hope is that, at other points in my life, I'll have a great deal more time and I'll start making up days. I mean, in winter time, with two bus trips and lunch hours spent indoors, I should just blow through books, shouldn't I?

Still reading Radcliffe and already behind...

This isn't going so well. If I want to finish all 1123 books before I die, I have to average no more than five days per book. So far, book number one has taken me 10 days. And I'm not even half-way through.

If I take 10 days per book, that means I won't finish for at least 35 years. I'm not sure I have that long left to live.

Worse, this first book, Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, is great. I'm loving it. It's dense, difficult reading with small print, tiny margins and more than four hundred pages. Very little dialogue and a lot of long descriptions.

But fantastic reading. You have to accept that Radcliffe's goal is to wring every ounce of tension from every situation but, once you have, it's just great.

And it's interesting to read something that is written about the 18th Century. I don't think the descriptions of Italy, its geography or the Catholic Church are very accurate but I'm not sure that matters either. It's a vivid, exciting novel.

I think, however, that I'll have to find something lighter for my second book before moving on to the second Radcliffe novel in our collection. Maybe a book about Gene Roddenberry?

Not at this rate...

It doesn't look like I'm going to get all my reading done before I die. Not at this rate, anyway.

I am just over one-quarter of the way through Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, an 18th Century gothic romance that has really got me hooked. I'm enjoying it too much to want to tear through it just to get it done.

But I've been reading it now for five days and that means it will take me almost three weeks to complete. That scares me a little... especially since I'm planning to go to a yard sale on Saturday that promises to have lots and lots of great novels to purchase.

So I guess I have to make my choice now: read as fast as I can in order to put up big numbers or accept that I'm not going to finish reading all 1123 books in my life time and take the time to enjoy each one that I do read.

With Vivaldi trapped in a chamber in the ruins of an old castle and his beloved Elenna spirited away to an isolated, mountain convent by a group of rogues in monks' habits, I think I'll choose to take my time and enjoy the adventure!

With friends like these...

I haven't had a chance to count the novels, plays and books of poetry yet but I'm continuing to enjoy Ann Radcliffe's The Italian. Clearly, the rule that a writer should show rather than tell hadn't been established yet but the descriptions are so vivid and inventive that I'm not really minding. It makes for slow reading, though. No way I'm finishing this book in the five days I had hoped.

Meanwhile, my friends in the various social media spheres have jumped all over this project as a means to make fun. Yesterday, I posted that I was enjoying the evening on a local patio, watching the sunset, and a friend commented, "Shouldn't you be reading?"

And, when I expressed an interest in a local yard sale that promises to include a lot of novels from the fifties and sixties, another friend commented that I wouldn't be particularly wise to introduce more books into my household at this time.

Yep. I'm a target.

As long as the books continue to be good, I don't mind.

Rethinking and recounting

I'm about into The Italian and I'm very much enjoying it. I can't say the characters are particularly deep or well-rounded but the writing is interesting and the images engrossing.

That being said, I've been doing some math. If I read a book every fives days (which is reasonable for most books), that means I'll take a total of 5615 days to read all of the 1123 books currently in our house that I have not yet read.

With 365 days in a year, that means it will take me, what, 16 years or so to read them all?

Yikes. I think it's time to modify the rules of my little project. Here we go. I will read all novels, plays and individual books of poetry in the house that I have not already read. I will skip the non-fiction, including philosophy and critical theory, as well as self-help and history books. Well... maybe I'll read the history ones.

So here goes: I will read the novels, plays and poetry as well as the history books. Nothing else.

Now I need to go back and count again, don't I?

Radcliffe's Intro brings smiles

Book 1 of 1123. Ann Radcliffe's The Italian. Published in 1797 and, apparently, quite popular then.

The edition I'm reading is the Oxford University Press "World's Classics" paperback version, first published in 1981. It was edited by Frederick Garber, then an English professor at SUNY Binghampton. Garber also provides a (thankfully) brief introduction.

I will say little about the professor's intro other than this: it represents the classic academic writing of the period. Dense, verbose and filled with long, overly complicated sentences, it lacks focus and, to be honest, interest.

Radcliffe's own introductory frame chapter, on the other hand, is fabulous. It's got me hooked already. Any time I put a book down with a smile on my face, I know I've got a good one.

My humble reading beginnings

Have you ever counted the books in your home?

I have. Between my partner and me, we have 1399 books (not including cookbooks, academic journals and how-to books). And that's after we went through a big purge a while ago.

I find that amazing. We've got them all over the house, crammed in book cases in the dining room, the guest bedroom, the offices and even in a storage room. We've got every book Dick Francis ever wrote (though not the ones his son, Felix, has been writing using his name); we've got everything John Locke ever wrote as well.

We've got books on feminist critical theory and moral philosophy, books on sports and entertainment. We've got mysteries and histories, sci fi and serious lit. We've got graphic novels and fantasy novels and really bad novels too.

I once dated a woman who owned two books. That was it. Just two books. And she gave one away while we were going out. That's even crazier.

And there are people out there who have more than we have. Some people have more books on their e-reader than we have in our house (which, by the way, is Kobo-free).

After I counted all these books, I sat back and rather smugly assumed that I had read most of them. At least half of them.

But then I wondered. So I went back and counted all the books I had actually read from cover to cover. What a surprise that was: of the 1399 books we have in our house, I've read exactly 276 of them.

Shameful.

So I made myself the following promise: before I die (an event which is still not likely to occur for at least two decades or so), I will read every book in this house that I have not already read.

I will read them in the order in which the find themselves on our bookshelves, starting with the office we call "The Green Room" and working my way out from there. That means there may even be a rough structure to the subject matter since we're pretty organised when it comes to our book collection.

Further, I committed myself to write a blog about the experience. And about the the books. And my own insanity in deciding to do this.

I start with Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, apparently a gothic romance from the 18th Century. Sounds exciting. Stay tuned!