I was going through the list of my books to read on Goodreads and I discovered that there’s more on that list than the ‘books I have read‘ list! I felt ashamed and felt that I had to do something about it, so I decided to read all of those books, all 130 of them (127 + 3 that I’m currently reading), in 2014.

Yes, you read that right. 130 books in one year. Now, I’ve heard of people doing the 52 challenge, wherein they read one book every week for one year. They say that it is really hard and that 90% of the people quit by the 4th or 5th week. So, when I decided that I will do 130 books, I sort of knew what I was getting myself into.

Now, had I kept it to myself and secretly done this, it would have been okay. But being the fearless one, I decided to go one step further and declared it on the Facebook group for my book club – Bookhad (they have an awesome blog that you must check out).

What happened next? Well, almost everyone, save a few who believed in me (love you guys!), chimed in on that post with ‘It’s impossible, dude!’ and ‘Bah! You can’t do it.’ and ‘You’re so brave! I love you Aamil!’ (okay that last one didn’t happen, but you get the drift).

Most of the people were saying that it is impossible. One person suggested that I do the Julie Powell Challenge, saying that would be easier than this! Someone even used arithmetic to calculate the number of days per book and came up with a figure of 3 days/book (that brilliant fellow is the loquacious scribbler at this blog).

If that was not all, these ruthless people started betting! One even offered to ‘eat his head’ if I did it (yeah you guessed it right, the loquacious scribbler strikes again).

So there I was, all dejected and sad that I won’t be able to do it after all, when suddenly I went into Super Saiyan mode and all those taunts started looking like challenges that I just had to demolish by the sheer power of my will (and get a lot of publicity for my blog in the process, hehehe).

And then, the final push came from Amarllyis amarllyis, (never spell amarllyis with a capital A – amarllyis) when she declared –

Nahi re. This is impossible,with a day job. If he does it, next Christmas i buy him an expensive gift. – amarllyis

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. I now have motivation and incentive to do this challenge. Without even realizing it, when I read that comment, I immediately posed like this –

Well, bring it on! I am going to devour each one of those little books like the bookhad that I am and to prove that I did it, I am going to document my journey by reviewing each book that I read and changing my Facebook cover to a pretty picture with a quote from that book, until I finish the next book and so on. You will find these reviews under Devoured on the navigation, filed under 130 Challenge.

I have also compiled all the 130 books into a list (nice story behind it) that can be found under 130 Challenge on the navigation menu, aptly titled To gobble. I will be striking out the names of the books that I finish, so the list will be a great way to track my progress. It also doubles up as my wish list. *wink*

Wish me luck, people! Hopefully by this time next year, I will have taken my expensive gift (from amarllyis no less, hehehe), read 130 books and earned the right to call myself well read. Right guys? Right? Guys…