Outside A Dog » about the site

about the site

I have a massive pile of books in my room. They all sit there, unread, while I go and, well, buy more books. I know it’s a problem, so I tried to do something about it. For 2008 I resolved to read every single book that I bought. And that didn’t happen, because there are just too many books out there and I have too little restraint. Now that my ‘to be read’ pile is becoming a ‘to be read’ mountain, I’ve decided that I needed to really do something about it.

So I decided that this year — 2009 — I’m not going to allow myself to buy a single book. [I"ve made no such promise to restrain from buying books as gifts, though, which I plan on doing quite a bit.] I know, crazy, right? But because I know how seriously I lack willpower, I added a motivational twist to my mission: for every book that I read this year I’m going to set aside five dollars. Initially I planned to take the money that I’ve set aside and splurge on something major with it — for instance, the limited edition of Les Misérables published by the Folio Society, or maybe an Amazon Kindle. And then I changed my mind.

My Puppy was the love of my life. In 2007 she was diagnosed with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, and in 2008 she was diagnosed with high-grade canine lymphoma. While the EPI was easy to control, we lost her in May 2009 after a long, brave fight due to the spread of the lymphoma.

So at the beginning of 2010, I plan to make donations to two charitable organizations: the Canine Genetics Research group at Texas A&M University to support their EPI research and the Animal Care and Assistance Fund, a new, non-profit extension of the Pittsburgh Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center, a practice that took outstanding care of my pup during her chemotherapy regimen.

I plan on using this site as both a record of my efforts and as a form of motivation — the more that I’m semi-publicly accountable for, the better. I’d like to post my thoughts on what I read and possibly even get feedback and suggestions from anyone who might stop by. For a while, everything here will be a work in progress, but hopefully it’ll all come together eventually.

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My friend Rachael was the inspiration behind starting this site and keeping track of a year’s worth of reading, complete with potentially-snarky comments about the books in question. And when I started to spread the word about this site, my friend Aaron wanted in, so he’ll be popping in from time to time with reviews of his own.

Comment from olesia kennedy

Time June 2, 2009 at 6:30 pm

Hi Amy,
So sorry you had to say goodbye to Mitzi…that is never an easy thing to do. Your fundraising idea of reading books to raise funds is a fabulous idea and I would like to sponsor you for $ 1 for every book you read this year on behalf of Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency Research. My dog Izzy has EPI too!