Reading Projects 

By William Roebuck 

Some people collect stamps. Others throw axes or play quidditch. From the Middle English term, hobyn, denoting a toy horse and hence an activity done for fun, “hobby” today seems like a pretty inclusive term, although a quick search on Wikipedia, turning up nearly four hundred hobbies, did not include my personal go-to recreational activity, reading projects, perhaps because it sounds about as cutting edge as a minuet dance club. And unlike a rash of coolly obscure names for practitioners of their hobby, whether old reliables “philatelist” and “lepidopterist”—not to invidiously single out stamp and butterfly collectors—or lesser-known practitioners such as badge-collecting “scutelliphilists,” “reading projectologist” just doesn’t have a lot of fizz and pop to it.