NaNoReadMo

To hell with the NAtional NOvel WRITing MOnth (as I've denounced in the past) - what about reading? Pajiba issues the challenge, which has to be better than watching CW primetime programing:

Beginning November 1st, 2009, we are proud to bring you Year Two of the Amanda Amos Kickass Cannonball Read. We’re changing the guidelines a bit, but keeping it simple, because half of you are drunk at any given point in time. Instead of 100 books, we challenge you to read 52 in one year. That’s not so bad, is it? Just a book a week. You can do it, slugger! You read the book; you post your thoughts, opinions, or reactions on your blog (if you don’t have one, get one, and welcome to the twenty-first century), and then do it all over again the next week. Simple. We’re even offering a little incentive: For anyone who reads and reviews all 52 books, we will make a contribution in that Cannonballer’s name to the Little Pink Growing Up Smart Scholarship Fund.

Links to all participants’ blogs (and a weekly count) will be located on a web page here on Pajiba, because we’re getting all streamlined and shit. A Cannonball Read category will even be added to the navigation bar. Reviews are essential; one of the best things to come out of Cannonball Read 1.0 was the posting of participants’s reviews here on the mother site, and we’d like to continue in that spirit, and expand it a whole big lot. (Yes, that’s a professional literary term.) Meaning, I’m asking you to commit to writing three or four paragraphs about the book, in the hopes that we can share your musings with other Pajibans, who will either check it out for themselves or run away from it in stores. Reviews from participants will continue to be posted on this site at 8 a.m. EST. It’s a great way to become a bigger part of the Pajiba community and — our ultimate goal here — encourage reading.

So there you have it. Grab a library card, raid your grandmother’s bookshelves, park your ass at Borders for a couple of hours, whatever. There are thousands of books out there waiting for you to put your grubby little mitts on them, rummage through them, and tell us what you think about them. If you’re a continuing Cannonballer, just keep posting them there thoughts of yours. If you’re a newcomer and you want to jump on in (please jump on in; I have a lot of free time on my hands) email either me or Dustin or check out the Cannonball Read group on Facebook.

Me, I do three blogs (including that oft-ignored writing project which takes half my year) and play in a band. And I am illiterate. So what the hell is your excuse?