At 34 I found myself surrounded by books, not knowing if I would read anything to completion again.

After working as a scientist for several years, reading non-academic work had become difficult. I had developed a tendency to treat books as resources for extracting bits of information for use in projects.

I decided to pretend that I had never read anything at all. That would encourage me to read books that had rearranged my brain once before, in the hope that they might do so again.

I started with the smallest books on my shelf — like Musil's Flypaper. That I had once read Infinite Jest and The Republic in college was no indicator that I would read anything even a fraction of their lengths again! I am tracking my progress in the table below: