Much to my surprise, I figured out that I have read 100 books already this year. I usually read about 100 in a whole year, so I am not sure why I am ahead of the game this year.
A big part of it has to do with listening to more audiobooks, I know. After over ten years of working at home, I started working in a law firm again. Even though my commute is only about 15 minutes each way, that half an hour a day listening to a book adds up. Also, because I have been listening in the car more, I got in the habit of listening while I putter around the house making dinner and doing chores.
So it could be the audiobooks. It could also be that I am not working actively on any major lists right now. After I finished the Modern Library list, I have been reading more randomly. It's not that the books I have been choosing are all light reading -- I've gone through Moby Dick and that very dense biography of John Stuart Mill in the past month alone -- but I haven't been wading through Theodore Dreiser or Henry James.
Whatever the reason, I have enjoyed my 100 books of 2008 and look forward to three more months of reading before the end of the year.
My 100th book? Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome. Part of my 19th Century reading jag. It's sort of a cross between Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and a P. G. Wodehouse novel.