The Poster Problem

Ages ago I mentioned that I had bought a poster from the Literary Gift Company as part of the Great Reading Project which listed a hundred recommended books to read, with each book having a little silver square to rub off once you had read it. Like this.

And as I'm a soul with an orderly mind this put me in something of a quandary. How to read them? Obviously being neither Arabic nor Chinese I would start in the top left had corner. But what to do after that? Vertical lines? Horizontal lines. If vertical, I could go top to bottom on the first lie but then should I go bottom to top on the next one? Similarly with horizontal ones; left to right to start with, but then should I go back to the left and go right again, or should I treat it like a knitting chart and read alternate lines in opposite directions? Then there was the slightly weird thought that I could start off with a diagonal line, but my brain couldn't cope with trying to work out what I would do after that. 

Taking another tack I thought that I could start by reading all the books which I actually own, but the idea of the higgledy piggledy mess that would be left on the poster as a result of that care-for-nothing approach couldn't be coped with either. 

Eventually I realised that thinking about how to read the books wasn't actually getting me much further forward in getting them read, and as the first one was always going to be the top left, irrespective of where I went with it afterwards, it was probably a good idea just to get going with that.

(It was Neil Gaiman's American Gods. After several unsuccessful attempts to find the copy  on the library shelves which the library catalogue assured me categorically was there, but which lived experience taught me was not, I used up an Audible credit on it. As will be evident in a later post this may have been a mistake on my part, but you live and learn. And sleep, as it turns out.)

So the first book is read, or at least listened to,  the little silver box has ben rubbed off to reveal the  picture underneath and I have started on Book 2. I decided in the end to read one book from each line which won't be totally tidy but allows me a little leeway to go back to an old favourite or tackle something new or hitherto stubbornly resisted, as the mood takes me.

And although I have read quite a lot of them already, there is to be no cheating They are all to be read again now, if I want to rub off that little silver square.