Curiosity > Accomplishment
Ahh, New Year’s Eve…the dawn of a New Life ™️. I truly love Jan. 1 — clean slate, fresh start — and do spend time thinking about how I’d like the impending year to unfold. Or rather, how I’d like to respond to how the year unfolds. I love a good quantifiable challenge —which, let’s face it, is what most people’s resolutions are — but I’m more interested in how an outcome might shape my outlook on life instead of just “I lost 5 pounds.” (Or, to tie in to this account: “I read 1,000 books.”)
I read this profile on The Booker Prizes website the other week about Bob Jackson, who has read all 315 shortlisted titles in under four years. That is most definitely a quantifiable and kudos-worthy feat. The Booker Prize is “the leading literary award in the English-speaking world.” It was first awarded in 1969 to Something to Answer For, by P.H. Newby. Prior to 2013, authors only from the British Commonwealth (or Ireland or Zimbabwe) were considered; the introduction of American work was controversial at the time (living in Ireland, I remember this!), but then George Saunders came along and do we even remember the before-times?! (Actually, Paul Beatty was the first American to win the Booker.)
So, anyway, this is quite a large “reading challenge” that Bob undertook. He started out by reading the prize winners since he was so affected by Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018). Once you-know-what happened (remember how everyone was so determined to write their own King Lear during lockdown?), Bob kept reading and then “[he] began to wonder what the competition had been like in each year.” Bob scored each book on a 5-point scale and if you head over to the Booker site, you can read the full interview which gives you some intel about favorites and least favorites, etc.
This is a wonderful New Years story. Mostly because of what Bob says about this “challenge”: “But the overwhelming conclusion from reading all these books is that the exercise has put me in front of dozens and dozens of authors who I hadn’t heard of — or certainly hadn’t read anything by — and it’s been immensely rewarding and satisfying.”
Curiosity > accomplishment for the sake of accomplishment. 🎉🎊
originally published on instagram