A READ-A-THON
for grown-ups!

I used to LOVE reading contests as a kid. When that yearly reading sheet was handed out for the month-long tracking of books read, I would scan the rules immediately and start scheming about the ways I was going to fill that sheet up as fast and furiously as I could.

In primary grades, it probably started out with rules about picture books and page numbers, and I'd read the likes of Danny and the Dinosaur, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Next, I probably moved on to all those Beverly Cleary books, The Chronicles of Narnia, Judy Blume, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Shel Silverstein, and Roald Dahl.

I remember how much fun it was to devour books my teachers had introduced me to, or that I'd seen my friends reading--but it was also fun to discover other books, maybe obscure ones in the school library that Mr. Rodahl showed me, or something my mom picked up from a friend at work.

In fact, that's how I remember coming across some of my most memorable books: biographies. My mom's co-worker brought in a bunch of books her boys liked, and they were the life stories of famous people. Usually they were famous people I'd never heard of, so the introductions were exciting to me, and it was in those books that I learned about people overcoming amazing odds to make something of themselves, or people who had to have enormous courage when they figured out what they wanted to do.

In those pages, I met Willie Mays, Eleanore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen Keller, and Amelia Earhart, and I lived for hours on end hunched up on a corner of the couch, bearing witness to their greatness and feeling like there could maybe even be a possibility for my own.

I didn't know it then, but book contests were all about exposure -- being exposed to all different kinds of ideas and people and events -- and they were all about time. They were all about honoring the act of reading -- of tuning out the rest of the world and entering another.

Okay, so why am I getting all nostalgic about these reading fests right now? Well, because after, say, 6th grade, I don't think I ever got to publicly try to read as many books as possible ever again. (Obtaining my Masters came close with gargantuan lists of great literature, but I had to analyze and regurgitate those for tests -- and so a bit of the joy was, let's say, compromised.)

And now my kids take part in these fun summer reading programs at the library where they get fancy pencils or pizza certificates or stickers when they fill a sheet of paper with books we read, and I have to admit I'm jealous of the little turkeys. I want the challenge! I want to make a list and get a prize! I want more exposure and honored time!

Alas, my dream's come true. I never told a soul, but somehow the book fairies read my mind and here at my new library, the Jefferson County Public Library, is a reading contest for adults for the month of January!

The goal isn't to read as many as possible, necessarily, but to read 5 books -- and this sheet of paper has this fabulous numbered list of lines for "author" and "book title." At the bottom is a simple questionnaire asking which book I liked best and why.

When I'm finished, I won't get a sticker or anything, but I will get to enter my questionnaire and submit it for a drawing, and maybe, just maybe I'll win a prize!

I have no idea what the prize is, but who cares? Folks, it's enough that it's a reading contest and I'm a contender.

Books I've started or am planning to read:
1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon (630 pages)
2. The Centaur, by John Updike
3. The Story of Edward Sawtelle, by David Wroblewsky

And 4 and 5 just might be amazing biographies my mom is going to bring home from work for me.