O LibraryThing ! O constant purveyor of new internet delights! Thanks to the now not-so-new forums feature, I have found a seemingly endless stream of new procrastinatory strategies. Not least of these is the Blessed BookMooch , which has suddenly transformed me from a manic book-hoarder growling defensively in front of a padlocked bookcase to a person who thinks that giving away books is the most entertaining possible way to spend an afternoon (Why? Because I get unread books in return, of course.). But now, a new source of delight, which speaks directly to my love of making lists and incrementalized reading: DailyLit .*

DailyLit is a website that takes public-domain works of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) and breaks them up into convenient bite-size morsels that it then gently feeds you (daily, as you might very well guess) by email. So you can read "Don Quixote" daily (a feat that I have long been attempting to accomplish with my own hard copy, with only quixotic success**) in a mere 448 parts, Dante's "Inferno" in 38 parts, or Aristotle's "Poetics" in a measly 19 parts. I am currently tackling three works: Shaw's "Major Barbara" (he really has such an immense body of work that I have barely scratched the surface after years studying drama), Freud's "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex" (I have just reached his account of bisexuality), and Shakespeare's sonnets (tastily portioned out one-a-day, the perfect amount). Limiting myself to just three showed considerable restraint, I thought.


*As you can see, I am attempting to expand my blogging repetoire to include such newfangled doohickies as links. And footnotes.
**I have an uncomfortable habit of figuring the act of reading classics in the terms of the texts. When I read "Moby Dick" I made an insufferable number of references to the blasted tome being my white whale.