Sunday, November 18, 2012

And for achievement offer us his ransom

Well, I have good news and bad news after my second prolonged absence from blogging.  First with the bad news; I was recently kidnapped and held for ransom. I'm not sure why, as I don't know anybody who could afford to pay any considerable ransom, nor do I hold any important information that one may wish to extract.

But kidnapped I was and it was quite an ordeal.  It all started on the evening of October 26th, which is coincidentally the last time I was able to post a blog.  Gunmen stormed my condo, blind-folded me and whisked me away in what I can only assume was some kind of late-model panel van without windows.  After driving for several hours, I was unloaded and taken into what I later would learn was some sort of abandon warehouse near the docks. For weeks, my captors tormented me with a variety of vicious techniques, but with no clear goal in mind.

And it is for this reason, that I haven't been diligent at updating my progress of reading through this list of 100 books, and it is for this reason that my progress of reading through this list has been nothing short of shameful.  But I think it's a pretty good reason.

Ironically, my captor's main torture technique was to force me to read non-fiction.  In my three weeks as hostage, they forced me to read The Fox Effect by David Brock, Follow the Money by Kevin Taft, Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, Seen Reading by Julie Wilson, and Our Man in Tehran by Robert Wright.  Oh the humanity!  Forced to read so many books that happened to be on me 'to read' list.  And it did keep me from Lord of the Rings for all this time.

Now for the good news.  First off, I was freed yesterday, with no ransom paid and no reason ever given for why I had been kidnapped. Secondly, with my new found freedom, I was able to finish Lord of the Rings!  Okay, I didn't finish it, but I finished the first book.  So I've now read 531 of around 1500 pages.  And I read 250 of those 531 pages in the last 24 hours.

But instead of forcing myself back into the same situation with the next book, I've decided to read a different book between each Lord of the Rings book.  So, starting tomorrow morning I will begin reading The Assistant by Bernard Malamud.  Then I'll read book #2, read another book from the list, then read book #3.  Basically, Lord of the Rings has been shifted from being #61 to being #63.

There's more good news too; I'm currently in Hawai'i, which is awesome, and affords me a lot of time to read.  Perhaps I'll be well into the third Lord of the Rings book when I return.  Perhaps... 

No comments:

Post a Comment