For the Purposes of This Post, Let’s Pretend That “4/5” Is a Major and Oft-Celebrated Milestone

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This is how I feel about finishing 80 books for The 100 Greatest Books Challenge:

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And this is how I feel when I look at The List of 20 books I have yet to read:

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Because among those 20 books—the 20 that will close out The Challenge, and probably my long, wistful period of mental health—lurk:

• The Iliad, a 3000-year-old yawn
• Yet another novel by my nemesis, Bill Faulkner
• Clarissa, in all its 1500-page glory
• Finnegans Wake, a nonsensical nightmare
• Ulysses, widely regarded as the most difficult novel ever written in English
• War and Peace (no need to elaborate here)
• Proust’s six-volume, densely packed, metaphorical, post-structuralist behemoth In Search of Lost Time, AND
• 13 other books

So, yeah, my feelings are… mixed, you might say. Conflicted. A little unstable. I’m too close to the finish line to ease up now, but too far away to start planning my post-race pie party.

But you know what? I’m convinced beyond a doubt—beyond half a decade; beyond 100 books—I’m convinced it will be worth it.

The pie party, that is. Not the reading.

Definitely not the reading.

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Bye for now. I’m off to go chain myself to another ten-pound classic. 80 down, 20 to go!