I do.

When they started handing out those little silver rings in my eighth grade sex ed class, you know the rings I mean, I refused to take one. I'm just not one for commitment. Well, sort of. I mean I'm ok with long term relationships, television shows, and even life style changes. What I refuse to commit to is an inanimate object.

If I took one of those little pledge rings it would be like wearing a neon banner telling the world just what I believe or what I think I'm supposed to believe. Even then I knew that committing myself to inanimate objects would never be something I could do. Going gaga over engagement rings and cell phones and purses was never really my thing. So I don't know what I was thinking when I took one of those confound reading lists.

Now there are lots of reading lists out there, some teachers give, some televisions hosts give, and there is even one that a rapper gave out but this list is of a whole other quality. This is a self imposed EPIC reading list consisting of over a hundred books and people keep adding onto the end. It includes everything from Atonement to Live from Golgotha from Atlas Shrugged to the Vampire Chronicles. This book covers all of it's bases. It separates the literature buffs from the literary scensters- The Library lovers from the Boarders posers- the... the Socially and metaphorically literate from the illiterate! ( ok I know that I'm just reaching and grasping now but I really wanted three examples.)

I taped the booklist to the end of my bookshelf at home and started checking off the ones on the list I've already read. Green Eggs and Ham? DONE. Enders Game? FIN. ok... ok... what next? The Hobbit!? DUH. The I continued to look down the list and much to my dismay I realized I had well over a hundred books to go. Yes, I finished Perks of Being a Wallflower in no time flat as well as its predecessor Catcher in the Rye but Les Miserables?! WTF! That would take at least a year. I mean it takes Hugo over a hundred pages before we even meet the main character.

Commitment is not something that should be taken lightly. When I picked up that shabby booklist from that stack I thought I would be committing my mind to self improvement and literary expansion but now as I look back on the ever growing list I realize in truth that I should be committed.