I swear to God I'll never understand/ How you can stand there straight and tall/ And see I'm crying/ And not do anything at all

The other day Drew and I were talking about what attracts us to static, and I mentioned that one aspect that I enjoy is working through really painful moves, gradually killing nerve endings, gradually building up the tolerance, etc. Apparently, Drew not only doesn't feel the same way, he also thinks that this may make me qualify as a masochist.

It's sort of similar to what I love about flying; I'm pretty sure that I don't love flying trapeze in spite of my serious fear of heights. I'm pretty sure that I love it, at least in part, because of my fear and the high I get from working on that fear (and the lows that I get, let's not kid ourselves). I realize this isn't normal, and maybe I am a masochist.

I've since been trying to think through what I do get out of these two sides of the same coin, playing with fear and playing with pain. I think it's several things:

First, fear and pain are limiting factors. Working this way helps me expand the world that feels safe. I have many irrational, childish fears (fire, I'm looking at you; also, phone calls). If I didn't work on them, the world would actually be scarier. I get to be in control when I make it intentional, and if there's one thing I love in life, it's control.

Second, I get to seem totally crazy. I'm not sure why I like giving the impression to folks that I have a weird relationship with fear and pain, but if I'm being honest, I do like watching people's reactions.

Third, when your hobbies are this scary and this painful, it really does make regular life seem great. You don't know how amazing your feet feel by default until you stop trying to do a toe hang, you really don't. There is just a pure endorphin factor here.

Fourth, I have a greater fear than heights, and that is stasis. I'm terrified to stop learning, growing, striving, trying. Life has to be a constant challenge, even to the point where I have to be constantly in battle with myself.

Make up your mind there are moments of light/ The one thing that's sure/ Is that there is no cure/ But that doesn't mean we don't fight

So, what are the longest books, you ask? Here are the top 15 with the ones I've read bolded.

3424 Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past
2944 Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time
1824 Robert Musil The Man Without Qualities
1703 Uwe Johnson Jahrestage
1533 Samuel Richardson Clarissa
1474 Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy
1440 Yukio Mishima The Sea of Fertility
1436 Herman Melville Moby-Dick
1386 Leo Tolstoy War and Peace
1330 Victor Hugo Les Misérables
1288 John Dos Passos U.S.A.
1280 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Don Quixote
1240 Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte-Cristo
1216 J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings
1079 David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest

Of the 23,445 pages that make up the longest 15 on the list, I've read 15,624 or so (I'm in the middle of A Dance to the Music of Time, so it's a bit hard to say exactly). That's about 67%, which I guess isn't terrible but also isn't that great. Though I guess I'm about 66% done with the list, too, so it's about right. I feel like I need to invest in these longest ones. Maybe I can also get to The Man Without Qualities this year as well; I can try really hard to be at 100 in early December and read it then (hahahah, I'm still behind on books, this is a terrible plan).

An updated FAQ

I wrote a couple of FAQs at the start of the project, but I think that I may need to do a new one. I've gotten some different questions over the years (years! gah), and some things have changed. Here goes:

Who created the list? (unstated but implied follow up: why trust them): 
So, confession time. Like the question about whether I read the list in order, this one really took me by surprise the first time someone asked it. It never occurred to me to care. I use this list which is based on a book. The recommendations were compiled from several editors/lit professors, I believe (I read about it right after this first was asked, but it didn't fully lodge in the brain). I guess I don't really care because I'm not reading the books to read the "best books" or the books I'd most enjoy or whatever. It's about broadening reading horizons. Any list will always be arbitrary, and that's fine.

How far are you?
This one changes all the time, but I'm at 662. Next big milestone is 750 (taking celebration suggestions), probably will hit that in Q1 2016 or so. Still aiming for completion by about age 32, but looking chancier than ever.

How do you find time?
I've written about that piece before, but here's a mini-answer. My strategies have varied over the years. I think one trick is being adaptive. The main piece is to prioritize this as much as possible. One thing that excites me and has been quite motivating lately is getting more organized. I've started systematically finding Online Archive and Project Gutenberg links for all the public domain options for older books. Oddly enough I'm going to run out of those soon, maybe in the next year. The slight issue is books in the German and the French; le sigh. I'll have to try harder with those. In addition to making it easier, at least for now, to read between library trips, it's just gotten me fired up to read more again. I read a lot online (just random articles), and this is helping to replace that in a way that helps the goal.

Do you buy all the books?
Good lord no. Way too expensive. I'm going to have to start buying some, but I'm going to try to minimize.

"If today were the day you had to stop dancing, how would you feel.....?"

Hahahaha. Oh, Q1 2015, you have not gone well list-wise. Not even remotely. I'm starting to realize that this year may be the first year since 2009 where I fail to read at least 100 books. Ouch. It's early days and it's not too late to get back on track, but we are seriously off track. We are hiking in the wilderness; we, like, got a training from those "leave no trace" people because we are sooooooooooo far off any recognizable path.

Now, then, where exactly do we stand? Aside from at the foot of the "now you have to read so many more books each quarter if you want to catch up" mountain, I mean. As should be pretty obvious, each quarter I aim to read 25 books. This quarter I squeaked in at 20. Like, seriously under the wire with 20. I realized on Sunday that I was at 17, flipped out, and read like a fiend, and I still am failing. Le sigh.

This makes it a particularly poor time to decide to read A Dance to the Music of Time, but I found a cheap set in a used bookstore recently, and, what can I say, I'm nothing if not insane and self-defeating. I'm aiming to read them during our up coming trip to AZ.

If, like me, you are struggling to fit in reading this year, may I recommend this helpful summary of 12 novels? I think, though I'm not totally sure, that my favorite is:

“Let’s go back to Brideshead,” she said.
“Oh, what a good idea.”
It really was a good idea. They had a wonderful time revisiting Brideshead.
– Brideshead Revisited