a.k.a. V.J.

Today, I finished reading Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. When I logged the title into my Goodreads account, I noticed that it was the 52nd book I’ve completed this calendar year. That seemed noteworthy as it puts me well ahead of a pace of one book per week — a volume of reading I have never come close to matching at any point in my life and would have thought unthinkable as recently as…well, last year.

Most of this reading has been part of my Classics Every Day initiative, but I have mixed in a few non-classics as well (reading those concurrently with the daily classics, not in their place).

At the risk of sounding like I’m patting myself on the back, I really want to pat myself on the back for developing this reading habit and sticking with it. All kidding aside, my sense of accomplishment is not so much a matter of what I’ve read — although that has been very rewarding — but because this process confirms my belief that big undertakings are best accomplished through small, persistent nibbles. There were days this year when I read for several hours, but most days, I set aside a half hour of reading time and don’t surpass that. The tortoise strategy at work.

I plan to continue my current pace and approach for the remainder of 2024. Next year, my goal is to keep reading daily, but I’ll probably eliminate the guideline that the daily reading needs to involve an acknowledged classic. The revised slogan for 2025 might be Read Something, Anything Every Day.

Below is a list of the books I’ve finished so far this year. An asterisk indicates a work that I wasn’t counting as a “classic,” although some might argue that a few of them qualify as such.

• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome*, Mary Beard
• The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
• Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes, Thomas Bullfinch
• A Stillness at Appomattox, Bruce Catton
• The American Heritage History of the Civil War*, Bruce Catton
• Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• The Pathfinder, Or, the Inland Sea, James Fenimore Cooper
• The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Enchiridion, Epictetus
• The Civil War, a Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville*, Shelby Foote
• The Civil War, a Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian*, Shelby Foote
• The Civil War, a Narrative: Red River to Appomattox*, Shelby Foote
• Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin
• Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey
• The Roman Way*, Edith Hamilton
• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
• On the Road, Jack Kerouac
• Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence*, A.J. Langguth
• Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
• The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
• The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
• Moby-Dick or, The Whale, Herman Melville
• Billy Budd, Sailor, Herman Melville
• Go Rin No Sho – The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Friedrich Nietzsche
• Meno, Plato
• Euthyphro, Plato
• The Republic, Plato
• Apology, Plato
• Ion, Plato
• Crito, Plato
• Critias, Plato
• Alcibiades, Plato
• Antony and Cleopatra, William Shakespeare
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare
• Macbeth, William Shakespeare
• Richard III, William Shakespeare
• Oedipus King of Thebes, Sophocles
• Antigone, Sophocles
• Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
• The Art of War, Sun Tzu
• Germania, Tacitus
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson
• Beowulf, Unknown
• The Sayings of Confucius, James A. Ware
• The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are*, Alan Watts
• The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety*, Alan Watts