Why 100 Books?

In 2013, I was beginning to realize, after almost 5 years outside of academia, my brain was slowly becoming mush. Not literal mush, but I felt a lot of what I learned way back in 2008 was starting to fade. Writing essays, testing my knowledge and seeking out academic knowledge wasn't something I did on a day-to-day basis anymore. So as my path started shifting towards grad school, so did my pursuit of new knowledge and rekindling old. 

I went back to school, taking some undergraduate course at George Mason University, and spent the year getting in touch with business and marketing practices since an MBA program with a concentration in marketing and entrepreneurship was the direction I was working towards. And with all this new knowledge flooding in, I found my academic niche again. But then February 2014 happened. That's when I discovered I somehow missed out on an important part of America education...big time.

It all came to a head when I saw TIME's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. I read the list and realized, to my absolute horror, that I only read TWO of the novels on the list. TWO! How was I not told to read The Great Gatsby, or Catch-22 or Catcher in the Rye in high school or college? The two books I read on this list were To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis). The former was a high school requirement and the latter I read out of my own curiosity (I read all 7 of The Chronicles of Narnia). The other books I remember reading in school include: Great Expectations (Charles Dickens), Cell (Stephen King), Onyx and Crake (Margaret Atwood), Feed (M.T. Anderson), and The Dogs of Babel (Carolyn Parkhurst). I know I read a lot more books, but those are the only five books I truly remember reading, and most of them were from college. 

After reading Time's list, I quickly snapped into action. I had already made plans to start reading more business books written by CEOs and business leaders (after a graduate school interviewer suggested a few titles as sage advice), so adding 100 more books seemed daunting. But I quickly went through the list and found many that caught my interest, and many were under 300 pages. I knew I could somehow pull this challenge off even with the added business books. So '100 Books in 100 Weeks' was born. If I am offered a spot in one of the graduate programs I have applied to, the 100 weeks might be extended, but I am still confident I can make a dent in this list even with some of the large 500+ page books on the list. 

So begins my journey to read some of the greatest literature known to man. I am excited and will be writing about every book I read. I cannot promise amazing insights or fantastic analysis. These are the musings of someone who isn't well-versed in literature and doesn't always pick out the correct  themes or knows what exactly what was going on in the world when the author wrote the book, so the symbolism or comparisons might be lost on me. I hope by the end of this journey I will be better at all these things I just mentioned, but if not that won't bother me. I am just ready to read these books and tell you my reactions. So here we go! 

- P