Alive and well and not living in London + 2012: the year of books

I'm alive. I'm reasonably well, too.

I recently joined up to a group on Ravelry whose aim is to complete 12 crafting projects within 12 months (I have overly simplified the aim). I'm sure I'll discuss my progress for this challenge more closely on my craft blog. The idea caused me to think about other ways this could influence 2012 for me, as I'm looking at The 144 as a way of achieving my crafting goals and actually getting some stuff done. How could this be applied to other areas of my life that are important to me? It came to me that, as reading has always been quite a central focus of my personal identity that has in recent years fallen by the way-side, perhaps a reading goal would be an enjoyable personal challenge. 

Just as the knitting/crocheting group I joined has a number of rules, it seems only logical to create my own guidelines for this challenge, and they are as follows:

1.  There are no genre restrictions.
2. The books can be in any format i.e. paper or electronic.
3. The entire book must be read within the set 12-month period. This does not, obviously include parts such as the publishing details, the index etc., nor the excerpt chapters of other books by the author designed to entice you to purchase and read that book next. So long as the entire story within a volume of fiction has been read then it counts towards the final tally. If a book was partly read last year, discarded, then picked up again this year it is only eligible provided I go back to the beginning and start again. 
4. Novels containing fewer than 200 pages do not count as a full book, but may count as part of a book. This may seem a little strange but I know that if I allowed myself to read very short books as part of the challenge, there is the potential that I might sit and read 10 books a day. 200 is still very short in my opinion, as, when I was 16, I managed to read at least 250 novels within the year, many of which were at least 500 pages in length. I don't seem to have that same capacity these days, but I feel that this challenge is a good starting point for gaining back that stamina.
5. Picture books don't count.
6. Neither do audiobooks. Anyone who knows me well will be aware of my habit of listening to audiobooks as I knit, iron etc. The fact is that, although these audiobooks are always unabridged, I am not reading them myself.
7. Abridged volumes don't count, either!

Well, that seems to be enough to start with and as I have 3 library ebooks due for return in as many days I'd better get on with it!