Chasing the Rainbow of a Thousand Books

After college (all books read for educational purposes are marked with an asterisk on my list) I began searching for a career that would let me continue to add books. I waited tables, but there wasn't much opportunity to get reading done between reciting specials and fetching sangria. I worked as a temp, too, and impressed my bosses by lugging Michael Schmidt's "Lives of the Poets" from job to job.

I got my first job in publishing by describing how much I love the look, smell and feel of books. Since then, I've been able to add such titles as the Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate, "10 Practice Tests for the New SAT" and "Career Opportunities in the Publishing Industry." Worthy tomes, all, and being paid to read is one of my life's great joys.

Perhaps I moved to New York in part because it's the most literary of American cities. I lived a year in the neighborhood described in "Motherless Brooklyn," and I've walked the streets of "Washington Square," "The House of Mirth," "The Chosen" and "The Colossus of New York."

Unknowingly, I started "The Good Soldier" near the Flatiron Building, steps away from where the book itself begins. I stumbled upon Jonathan Franzen bird-watching in Central Park right around the time I finished "How to Be Alone." He knew I recognized him after I stopped, turned and stared.

Several months ago, I hit 990, and the dilemma began. Should the final 10 be old favorites? New classics? Aside from the brief fixation on covers, I'd never had a method for choosing books. One followed another -- for school, based on recommendations from friends, or according to the magical process by which books find you at the exact moment in which you need them. I read "Journal of a Solitude" during a period of sharp loneliness, and "Darkness Visible" during my own dark period.

As I neared the big one, though, I became hyper-conscious of what to read. In the end, of course, I simply read. One page after another. "The Afterlife," "The Intuitionist," "Twilight of the Superheroes," "The Great Railway Bazaar."

And then I realized what my 1,000th had to be. The novel that had been staring me down from the shelf for years, the most improbable of bestsellers, intimidating in every way, a book even academics fake having read. I fantasized about beginning the novel in a comfy chair with a glass of wine by my side. In reality, I opened the first page of the 1,000th book in neither comfort nor mild inebriation. Truth be told, I was stuck in traffic on the Fung Wah bus en route to Boston. Less than ideal circumstances, but that opening line is a killer. As with so many books so many times before, I read the first few words and I vanished.

"A screaming comes across the sky."

It'll be a while before I begin No. 1,001.