Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

There is a charming catalog called Bas Bleu that comes to my door every so often.  Most of its offerings revolve around books and book-y things, and even when I don’t need anything to read I always thumb through this little mail order treasure.

The most recent issue offered a list of reading challenges for 2016.  In this time of heightened rancor among conservatives and liberals, conservatives and conservatives, and conservatives and everyone else, it was great to read some suggestions most people could agree with.

Here for your consideration, are some challenges that struck me as pleasurable.  Read a school assignment again. Read a poem a day for a month. Read a classic you’ve never read or a biography of someone you don’t like.

For a school assignment, I reread my Master’s thesis which was about David Adler, an architect who lived and worked around the same time as Frank Lloyd Wright. I got that degree twenty years ago this May, so it was most appropriate to revisit that period of my life. I haven’t read a poem a day for a month yet, although I have read enough poems in one sitting to qualify.  I’m still deciding on a classic and a biography. Perhaps if I choose wisely, I can accomplish two challenges with one book.

The last challenge on the list is to “read the entire Bas Bleu catalog in one sitting.” I do that every time! The writing is as good as any of the other suggestions that are given.