50 BOOKS!

Well, last night, sometime during the second half of the Hockey Night in Canada doubleheader, the year's goal of reading 50 books -- "start to finish, and in that order," in the immortal words of George Costanza -- during the calendar year of 2006 was completed.

No. 49 was Doubting Yourself To The Bone by Alberta-based author Thomas Trofimuk, which is a fairly good second novel about a widower putting his life back together. It was good enough to pique my interest in seeking out Trofimuk's debut, The 52nd Poem, and hopefully read it at some point mid-year, not at the end when it's a race against the clock to meet a self-imposed deadline.

A work of fiction about a man adrift in mid-life was a segue into No. 50, Liberal leadership also-ran Bob Rae's updated paperback edition of The Three Questions: Prosperity and the Public Good, first published in '98.

So, like with a 50-goal scorer in the NHL, once you've read 50 books in a year, apparently you'll be expected to do so every year. Great. More pressure.

Happy New Year.

Related: Review of Doubting Yourself To The Bone (Quill & Quire)

Talk to you... in 2007. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.