Deciding to Go Fifty-Fifty

As we prepare to turn the page on another year, I—and other members of my family—am prepared to turn many pages in the coming year. A couple weeks back, Beni presented me with a yearlong challenge/project that her college friend Lilly helped create. The project—called FiftyFifty.me—challenges its participants to read 50 books and watch 50 movies in 2012. The titles are self-selected, but they must be new to the reader/viewer.

This all appeals to me on many levels, including (1) a demanding but attainable goal (50 books and movies over a 52-week period require a tough-but-doable one-per-week pace—which still allows for a two-week break), (2) the opportunity to work down the stack of unread books that have accumulated on our bookshelves and my nightstand, and (3) my love for creating and maintaining lists.

Despite what the Mayans may have predicted for this year, I’ve been looking forward to 2012 with hopeful and non-fatalistic eyes. For starters, according to Chinese astrologers (and placemats at Chinese restaurants), we’re about to enter the Year of the Dragon, the same special animal-year in which I was born. Secondly, and even more superstitiously, the last two numbers of 2012 and I share an especially close connection, much like 1 and 2 on the number line. In 2004, this blurb of mine was published on the weekly compendium of feedback on the words for Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day website/newsletter, which was celebrating its 12-year anniversary by highlighting words relating to the magical number 12 (e.g., duodenum, dodecagon, duodecimal):

Duodeciphiliac

For some time now, I have been drawn to the number twelve. My obsession was born of a boyhood admiration of a basketball player. Inexplicably, I believed his talents were somehow tied to his jersey number. Since then, this fixation has taken on a life of its own. The most notable example is my requirement when setting an alarm clock. I only set the alarm to times that add up to twelve. For example, 6:33, 7:14, and 8:04 are okay but 7:00 is not. If only I had time for twelve hours of sleep a night …

(By the way, each of the sentences above contains exactly twelve words.)

Fanatical numerical attachments aside, this year—and specifically the 50/50 project—is stirring excitement among members of my family. To date, five of us—Aunt Liz, Beni, G, me, and Olivia (!)—have signed up, and I’m working on securing commitments from my book-rich (but film-poor) parents. The participants among us who aren’t in elementary school have decided to create a book club within a book-and-film club. Each month, one of us is responsible for selecting a title for our foursome. January’s selection is tied with blood—both with the author and the storyline. The Geneva Connection is a crime thriller set in the high-stakes, high-risk, high-reward (and highly bloody) world of investment banking. Penned by investment-banker-turned-author-who’s-also-G’s-cousin Martin Bodenham, the book debuted this month just in time for our project. Here’s hoping The Geneva Connection gets our year off to a bloody good start.

My family and I—and hundreds of others—are set to embark on a yearlong journey starting tomorrow. I encourage you to follow the travels and musings of Olivia, the project’s youngest participant, who’ll surely put her dad to shame with her timely blog posts and insightful commentary. I, on the other hand, will do my best to document the steps I take—months late, mind you—through my gone-to-that-well-already formula of lame puns, tangential remarks, and pithy attempts. Minimally, I’ll share the reason(s) why I selected a particular title, and the ways the book or movie changed my life. (Okay—maybe not much of the latter.)

Given my desire to flip many of the books I own over from not-read to finally-have-completed, a considerable portion of my selections will be from a collection a past version of me found interesting at one time. The other titles will come from our local library, recommendations from family and friends, and gifts. (Note: I’ll take a more quixotic approach when selecting movies.) Several years ago, my friend Van gave me Infinite Jest, the weighty tome—in both the literal and lb. sense—by the late David Foster Wallace. I’d like to make the 1,079-page masterpiece the book that gets me to the magic number by year’s end. To do that, I need to keep a three-pages-a-day pace for the entire year, which is my way of making a daunting and seemingly infinite work more feasible and finite.

And so this New Year’s Eve, we’ll bust out the noisemakers, party hats, and goofy glasses—but also our first selections on our paths to 50.