A Dangerous and Stupid Idea

So I was having a bit of a crisis last night as I tried to sleep and it spilled over into today. It dawned on me that I am essentially ignorant.

Ask me about politics and I’ll tell you I don’t vote.
Ask me about the news and I’ll tell you I don’t understand.
Ask me about anything and I’ll nod and agree but neither view nor opinion shall pass my lips.

Does it matter?

Well, not in the day-to-day loving yourself way that all of the hippies talk about, but it certainly has some significance if you’ve decided to write a blog.

Which I have.

For good or ill.

So I decided to do some research into the causes and cures for ignorance.
Apparently the only cure is patient absorption of knowledge and one of the chief causes happens to be apathy.

So I did a little research into the causes of apathy and do you know what I found out?

I’m depressed and I should talk to my GP.

Man, the internet is full of shit.

With that in mind, I decided there’s only one way out of the stupid-trap - I need to learn more stuff. If only there was a series of books that gave a brief overview of a great many topics.

And there it was, staring at me from the little shelf at the bottom of the stairs - the Oxford University Press Very Short Introduction to Modern Ireland.

I could hear cogs grinding in my head and you know what that means - I was about to have a dangerous and stupid idea.

There are, to date, 217 books in the Very Short Introduction series, each one amounting to about 150 pages of condensed knowledge. So I thought (brace yourselves) that I might just read them all, in order.

But where’s the challenge in saying I’m going to read all of them eventually - what I needed was a realistic deadline.

Then I thought, where’s the fun in a realistic deadline - I need something utterly absurd.

So here it is, friends, my crazy self-appointed task:

217 books, one year, no excuses.

The timer starts as soon as I start the first one. Place your bets now as to how long it will take me to lose interest completely.