In With The New - Welcome Baggs!

Happy 2013!

As we begin 2013, we will be welcoming our first co-blogger with a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry (to be fair, he's also the first person on the blog who I had to talk out of blasting Bob Seger to celebrate the end of Finals Week once... so, consider the whole).   Maybe if we ask him real nicely, he will post some poetry on this otherwise uncultured blog.  It would pretty the place up a bit, for sure.

So, we proudly introduce Baggs! (Everyone say "Hi Baggs!" in unison... that's right, both of our readers... just call each other so it will be in unison...  thank you).  Just wait until we debase our high-cultured buddy with the smut we read here!  Ok, I'm kidding, but only sort of. Seriously, it's great to have Baggs here.

As you can see on the banner, this is year has been dubbed "The Year of The Big Book."  As such, we are each going to pick at least one "big book" to read this year.  Our usual criteria is to pick one 750-plus pages, but Dave scoffed at that, so let's make it 1000.  Done and Done.

I will try to tackle Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.  I hope to hit more than a few other big books, but will sprinkle in some small books for sanity's sake.  The rules are the same as always, with one minor exception.  The exception is that I have basically declared that I will intentionally violate the rules, thus blowing a creation-threatening hole in space and time, if I am assigned to read  Fifty Shades of Gray (or Grey... whatever... and I will NOT look it up).  It's like when I learned about MAD (mutually-assured destruction) while studying political science.

Book finishing Fifty-Shades was like Stalin hearing a whisper from Truman's envoy confirming that the US had developed the A-bomb (that scene brought to us by Winston Churchill in his Tome about WWII).  In short, I'm eyeing a Tim Tebow book or something of that ilk so that I have my own unfathomable weapon just in case he's pondering anything rash.  Unfortunately, as evidenced by his reading of Fifty-Shades, this is like North Korea arming itself.  He doesn't blink! MAD only works as a deterrent when both sides want to avoid destruction.  Book clearly will read anything.  But, as I learned from good-old Abe Lincoln, sometimes you have to break a constitution to preserve it.  I'm not sayin... I'm just sayin (I will not read that book).




So, the rules for Baggs' edification:

We each assign each other a book.  You can veto it only if the other person has not read it (subject to the above MAD scenario).  We each try to read 25 book in the year (in 2013, that should include one BIG BOOK), but anyone can set a higher goal.  We like to write about what we read and discuss books on this page.  Feel free to comment, post or even start a rap war (It has already happened once!).  We encourage each blogger to keep everyone up to date on what we are currently reading and keep a running total of finished books.  We do that with the "What are we Reading" and "Finished Books" sections.  But, really, none of this is compulsory... just for fun.  If you do not read 25 books... we give you some crap or something.  We will probably just make you buy lunch at some point.

It's fun and the page works for us (we do not work for the page).   We are contemplating tracking pages read (it is The Year of The Big Book).  If you want to do that, DO IT!

See, it's pretty simple.

And, since I'm on an 80s movie kick, here's another classic that describes us well (and, although I cannot rule out a panty-raid, I cannot promise it... and it probably just won't happen).