Going Through the Motions, Getting Back in Gear: Intentions for 2018

sunrise over Cadillac Mountain, October 2017

After a year of fits and starts with this blog, I unofficially took a few months off (you may have noticed my last post was in September, and even then, I was just re-posting piece I'd been writing for Shelf Awareness anyway). In that quiet space, I walked away from most all of my writing projects and the computer and, as made sense for me, the internet (though I still overshare on Instagram, and I'm not even sorry about it). I contemplated giving this space up and calling it quits, weighing the amount of work it is to find the time and energy to write something meaningful against the ever-limited amounts of time and energy I seem to have these days.

But something in me couldn't let go. Because even though I haven't been the best blogger, or the best reviewer, or the most consistent writer of late, a not-so-small part of my heart loves this space I've carved out, the time I find to write about books and running and the things that make me excited.

In a world full of bad news, I want to make an effort to make space for the things I'm passionate about. In a life full of ups and downs--and 2017 brought quite a few downs, both personally and politically speaking--I want to have a space to think through my thoughts, and this is that space.

The Year Ahead: Reading, Writing, Living

It's been a quiet little blogosphere around these parts of late. While I'm tempted to apologize for that, one of my goals for the year is to be less sorry and more thankful... and so I'm not going to say I'm sorry I've been distracted, but instead observe that I am thankful that you, whoever you may be, are still here, reading whatever strange musings I fling out into the interwebs, sparse as they may be.

Which brings me to resolutions, focus, and my lack thereof for 2016.

My word of focus for 2016 was "savor." At the end of 2015, feeling burnt out from a year of too much yes, too much joining, and far, far too many to-dos, I wrote,

I will savor the moments that bring me joy, and the people and activities that are part of that.

I failed miserably at this focus. I continued to say yes--travel! weddings! presentations! volunteering!--and did not create the space I needed to be able to sit back and savor the moments I so craved. I got hung up on small disasters, allowing them to derail my sense of purpose. I focused on large disasters--of which there are many, many many--and found myself paralyzed by the horror of it all. I tried to move my life away from lists and to-dos by refusing to mark pleasure activities (reading, hiking, day trips, dates) on a list of "Things to Accomplish." Unable to move completely away from lists and to-dos (my brain can't hold everything, after all), my list of "Things to Accomplish" became little more than household chores and business tasks, and drained the savoring right out of my everything.

Goals, Goals, Goals: Reading, Blogging, and Personal

I'm not big on resolutions. I've made them in the past, but inevitably, they fall off my radar by the end of January and are replaced with the standard chaos of everyday life. So now instead of resolutions, I choose one word to focus my energy on over the course of a year, and in 2016, it's savor. The intent is to remind myself to enjoy the things I love--in part by letting go of the things that take up my time and energy and are not things I love.

It's Resolution Season, Baby

2013 has come and gone, and 2014 is well upon us. And January, as everyone knows, is the season of resolutions. What will we set out to do? How will we make 2014 better than last year, the year before, and all the years before that? Resolutions are a sign of our constant striving for improvement--for perfection.

But 2014? This year, I'm throwing perfection out the window. My resolutions in the past have always pushed towards the unreachable state that is "perfect." It hasn't worked. So here's a list of resolutions that push towards... well, not imperfection, but perhaps the embrace of imperfection:

1. Read carefully. Slow down. Savor the pages. If I'm not savoring them, skip it and move on. Life's too short to read bad books.
2. Run in new places. Without the GPS tracker. Who cares how many miles it is?
3. Eat more chocolate. Also, drink more red wine.
4. Go to-do-less. One entire week without a to-do list. Vacation weeks do not count.
5. Be thankful. Sounds easy. Probably isn't.
6. Converse. (Not the shoes, the verb.) In person. Online. Reach out. Connect.
7. Try. Without trying, there is no doing, no matter what Yoda says. 
8. Fail. We can't learn from our mistakes if we're constantly afraid of making them.
9. Sleep. Who doesn't need more sleep?
10. Less multi-tasking. Sure, listening to a book while driving can be great. But so can cruising along with the windows down and the music blaring. Getting a TV show in on the treadmill is a great way not to focus on the running, but maybe focusing on running shouldn't be such a terrible thing. One thing at a time, even if that means sacrificing productivity.

What are your goals (or un-goals) for 2014? What do you do to stick to your resolutions?

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This post is part of The Broke and the Bookish's Top Ten Tuesday meme.

2013: A Year in Numbers

I kicked off 2013 with a few big reading goals, all of which seem to have done me some good:

• 100 books, 30,000 pages
• Read better
• Less challenges
• More readalongs

In 2013, I read less books than I read in 2012, but more pages. I read less ARCs and reviewed less titles on assignment, but upped the number of my own TBR titles significantly. I participated in no challenges except the Classics Club, instead opting for the more personal readalongs that I've come to love--for Harry Potter in the spring, and hosting my own for Jane Eyre in September. 

Because I love me some numbers and data and spreadsheets, here are my 2013 reading stats in visual form. I use a spreadsheet full of formulas to keep track of my reading stats and goals (which, by the way, I am happy to share with anyone who would like a copy for themselves), and have grown to love watching the numbers change year over year.

Onwards to 2014... reading resolutions still under consideration!

2013 Reading Stats | Create infographics

On Finishing, and Not Finishing, Lists

A little over two years ago, I made myself a list of 26 things to do before I turned 26. With my birthday looming a mere four hours away, the list is only partially finished.

The over-achiever, to-do list obsessed person in me is tempted to be disappointed that I didn't finish. I haven't planted a garden. I haven't made an apple pie after a day of apple-picking. I haven't written a book, or even a story. I haven't written thank-you notes to my teachers, even after attending the funeral of one of the teachers on my thank-you note list and kicking myself for not making my appreciation known before it was too late.

But the list wasn't really ever about achievements. It was about pushing boundaries, challenging myself to think big, and exploring new paths. And in that, I'm more than satisfied.

To learn to juggle, I took a circus class with my mom at Charm City Movement Arts, where we learned not only how to juggle (note: learning to juggle and actually juggling are not quite the same thing, and I'm somewhere in between the two) but how to walk on a tightrope (which is much, much harder than it looks). 

I made a soufflé, and it didn't collapse. I went to the Library of Congress with a dear friend and sniffed some books (they were gift shop books, but I'm counting it). I made some lovely things.

I flew an airplane. 

I read the first 240 pages of War and Peace before giving up on it for good, but my preparation for Tolstoy did include reading Anna Karenina, which I adored. I read five Hemingway novels. I made a new friend (several). I ran my first 5k, and then went on to run a half marathon... and then another and another.

I might not have accomplished all 26 things, but when I look at what I did do, I can honestly say the list worked. I tried new things and then some more. Some, like War and Peace, I abandoned. Some, like the 5k, I expanded. 

And some, like reading all of Hemingway's work, will make a second appearance on the soon-to-be 30-by-30 list.

Buzzfeed's 65 Books to Read in Your Twenties

Guys, I'm not sure if being a twenty-something just feels trendy right now because I am a twenty-something and therefore all the twenty-something articles seem relevant to me, or if it is actually trendy, but either way, I feel there has been an EXPLOSION of content for, by, about, and catered to twenty-somethings in the last few months. Just me? Anyone else?

Perhaps one of my favorites of these posts so far has come from Buzzfeed, famous curator of llama pictures and cat memes and baby-animals-doing-cute-things gifs (which is apparently pronounced "jiff", but that's a whole different story). They compiled a list of 65 books you need to read in your twenties, full of a ton of books I've mostly never even heard of.

Image from Buzzfeed.

Anyhoo, because I am a twenty-something with a penchant for reading and a slight obsession with reading lists, I thought I'd share the list here along with notes on which I've read. (And also because Alley at What Red Read did this and I'm not feeling particularly original today, so this post is posted with apologies to Alley).

Since I've read so few of these books, perhaps this will be my new reading challenge after I get to my 26th birthday and realize I've failed to read all of Hemingway's works and/or complete War and Peace?

Bold are books I own.
Strikethroughs are books I've read.

Great Novels

1. The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
2. What She Saw... by Lucinda Rosenfeld
3. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
4. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
5. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
6. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
8. Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
9. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
10. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
11. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
12. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
13. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
14. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
15. Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman
16. The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
17. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
20. A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
21. The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
22. The Group by Mary McCarthy
23. Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen
24. Pastoralia by George Saunders
25. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
26. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
27. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
28. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
29. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
30. Generation X by Douglas Coupland
31. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
32. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
33. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
34. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
35. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
36. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World by Haruki Murakami

I've read a whopping four of the novels above (seven if you count the His Dark Materials as three books instead of one), and of the unread ones, only have a few on my to-read list. Well, only had a few on my to-read list, because now I've added more.

Great Memoirs

1. Bossypants by Tina Fey
2. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
3. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young
4. The Dirt by Motley Crue and Neil Strauss
5. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
6. Just Kids by Patti Smith
7. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
8. Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
9. I Don't Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner
10. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
11. Lit by Mary Karr
12. I'm with the Band by Pamela Des Barres
13. Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin

Only two memoirs, but at least my percentage is higher here...

Poetry

1. The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton by Anne Sexton
2. Actual Air by David Berman
3. The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch by Kenneth Koch
4. Alien vs. Predator by Michael Robbins
5. The Collected Poems of Audre Lord by Audre Lord

No surprise here, since I rarely, if ever, read poetry that isn't Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein.

Essays That Will Make You Think And/Or Laugh

1. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
2. How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
3. My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum
4. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
5. Up in the Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

One. Still, that's a 20% rate, which might make essays my best category so far.

General Life How-Tos

1. How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
2. How's Your Drink? by Eric Felten
3. The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
4. Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
5. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
6. He's Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt & Liz Tuccillo

Two general life how-to books! Well, two if you count How to Cook Everything, which I confess I've never read cover-to-cover but do own and reference with fair regularity. And I read He's Just Not That Into You in high school, not as a twenty-something, and honestly, I think most of it went over my head, but I'm counting it here anyway.

Goals That Do Not Involve Books

I already posted about my reading and blogging goals, but in an effort to hold myself accountable to some unseen internet force, here are my non-reading-related goals for 2013:

Eat Real Food
In 2012, I stopped eating food with high fructose corn syrup in it. No, not because I think it is evil. Because I  started to realize that they put that shit in everything (Bread, I'm looking at you.). This made me start reading labels more closely, which basically made me never want to eat prepared food again ever. So this year, I plan to do a little learning (Michael Pollan, anyone? See how I made this about books, after all?) and really focus on eating real food with ingredients I understand and could locate without the aid of a chemist.

Plan Menus
If I'm giving up on fake food, I'm giving up a lot of convenience, which means I'll actually have to use my brain at the grocery store (actually, before I even go to the grocery store), which means maybe I'll start reading the seventybagillion cookbooks we own.

Walk the Dog
We got a dog last year (we love him!) and, as we both started training for various races in the fall, slacked off with the dog walking in favor of just throwing the ball for him to get his exercise. While this does tire him out, it does not exercise the humans or improve leash behavior.

Go 1,000 Miles
I'm totally stealing this from Sharon, but I love it too much not to. Her goal: Run 1,000 miles. My goal: GO 1,000 miles (which is basically the same thing, but I plan to include walking -- see goal above -- in my count).

Own Less Things
The stuff! It just keeps growing! So, one thing in, one thing out. Preferably even two things out.

Reading Goals, I am Making them Public

Goals! I has 'em, and I am making them public, because it is a new year and that is, you know, a thing that you do. These are my reading and blogging goals.

100 books, 30,000 pages
I beat this last year (109 books, 37,843 pages), and while it is pretty standard to try to push ourselves beyond previous limits, I don't want to do that here. See next goal for details.

Read Better
One of the reasons I'm not upping my goal number or page count is because this year I want to read better. More books I lovegushovercan'tstoptalkingaboutwon'tstoppushingonpeople. 2012 was a good year for reading, but in compiling my best of 2012 post, I realized it was not a great year for reading. I want 2013 to be GREAT, DAMMIT.

Less Challenges
Last year, I fell one book short of completing the Back to the Classics Challenge (I never did read a play, but really, I hate reading plays, so I'm not too surprised at myself). This year (and for the next four years), I am already participating in the Classics Club, and aiming to read fifty classics in a five-year span, and that's enough for me.

More Readalongs
Unlike my own failed challenge, I participated in--and LOVED--several readalongs this year. I get a lot more from the books read communally than those read alone, and since this whole blog started in an effort to find MAH PEOPLE with whom I could talk books all day, every day, readalongs seem the perfect fit.So, readalongs, here I come. Starting with you, Harry Potter.

Write More
This year, I only wrote 158 posts (it was 172 in 2011, and a whopping 217 in 2010). And sadly, I think a lot of what I posted here in 2012 was fluff, or poorly planned, or not as thoughtful as I'd have liked it to be. I also read about 25 books that I never got around to reviewing. I'd like to hit 175 posts this year, and make a concerted effort to make them better along the way. And leave less books undiscussed.

Oh Yeah, And Hemingway and Tolstoy, Too
I have less than 12 months left to complete my 26 by 26 list, on which I included "Read all of Hemingway" (I am woefully behind) and "Read War and Peace" (I am also woefully behind). So I guess those things are happening this year. I CAN DO THIS.

Time Flies When You're Reading Books

Egads! It's JULY!? When did this happen?

It seems the first half of the year snuck out under cover of darkness (literally, I haven't had power since Friday, so it's been a rather dark--and hot--three days), and now I'm diving in to the second half of the year. In order to keep myself accountable, here's a recap of where I stand on my goals to-date:

Balance

I challenged myself to read a more balanced selection of titles this year, spreading my reading across literary fiction, genre fiction, non-fiction and classics. To date, I have read 55 books in 2012 (20 of which were assignments for Shelf Awareness): 17 literary fiction, 13 genre fiction, 18 nonfiction and 7 classics. Ten are unfinished (eight in progress!, and 2 DNFs). Clearly, I need to up my reading of the classics.

Twenty-four of these 55 titles were written by female authors--not too bad, but not quite as balanced as I'd have hoped. Forty-one of the 55 were published in 2010 or later.

Seventeen were 400 pages or more. I've read a total of 17,786 pages, averaging 9 days per book completed.

Classics Challenge

To date, I've fulfilled 4 of the 9 categories for the Back to the Classics Challenge. I still have to read: a 19th-century classic, a classic play, a translated classic, a classic award winner, and a classic set in a country I will not visit in my lifetime. Recommendations accepted.

A Victorian Celebration!

To help with my goal of reading more classics, I also signed up to participate in A Victorian Celebration, hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey, pledging to read three Victorian titles in the months of June and July. I've read one so far--two more to go in July. 

26 by 26

On my 26 by 26 list, I set a goal of reading War and Peace and all of Hemingway's works before my 26th birthday. I've read 3 Hemingway titles to date, and none of War and Peace. Plus I'm thinking I should ease into Tolstoy with Anna Karenina first, so I need to get cracking.

Thoughts for a New Year

As we turn to a new year, and embark on those impossible I-will-only-eat-healthy-foods resolutions we made in the midst of the glut of the holidays, let us remember what Muriel Barbery first put so simply:

It would all be so much better if we could share our insecurity. If we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and Vitamin C, no matter how much they may nurture us, cannot save lives nor sustain our souls. (From The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I absolutely adored.)

There's more to 2012, really, than fruits and vegetables. And those of us who eat fruits and vegetables and chicken year-round find it INCREDIBLY OBNOXIOUS that when we try to grocery shop the first week of January, THERE IS NO PRODUCE LEFT because all the one-timers have bought twenty-seven pounds of bananas that will all go brown before they get eaten anyway and didn't leave any for me. Hmph.

2012 Reading Goals

2011 marked the first year in which I set myself some readerly goals: read more books I already own, read more non-fiction, read more of authors I love, read more classics. These were broad, open-ended, numberless assignments, and overall, I was pretty pleased with the results. I read 84 books in 2011, of which:

• 9 I left unfinished
• 8 were re-reads
• 57 were fiction and 27 non-fiction
• 36 were published in 2011
• A mere 6 were classics
• 16 were re-visits to authors I know and love
• 29 were books I already owned and/or had were on my list in 2010

Twenty-nine books I already own wasn't so bad. And 27 non-fiction felt decent to me. But this year, I'm going for balance. I am going to attempt (attempt being the operative word, here), to read a balance of literary fiction, genre fiction, non-fiction and classics. In order to prevent myself from going absolutely insane, I will not be counting review assignments towards these numbers. The definitions of these categories may be a bit fluid, but it will have to do. This is, after all, my own challenge to my own self. I suspect I will have the most difficulty with the non-fiction, as I really have yet to find my groove with what kinds of non-fiction books I adore, and which ones I slog through.  Tips and advice always welcome on that.

It's probably worth noting, too, that I have challenged myself to read everything Hemingway has written and War and Peace before my 26th birthday, so I will be attempting to chip away at that in the coming year.

Wish me luck, I say.

A Poem a Day, Inspired by NPR

NPR has done it again: inspired me to do something I never thought I'd do. This time: read poetry. Alan Heathcock, author of Volt, wrote recently on NPR about his impulsive decision to start reading a poem a day. With breakfast. At Jiffy Lube. Wherever. They are "portable, peaceful, perfect."

While I know myself better than to expect that I will be able to sit quietly with a cup of tea and a poem every morning (I'm too likely to oversleep for that), I own several poetry anthologies and have access to the internet almost every waking minute of my life, so I am going to do my best to read 365 poems this year. I've always wanted to learn to read poetry, to learn to appreciate it, to actually open the anthologies I own. Hopefully, like Heathcock, this exercise will prove to be a "poem each morning, to sustain me through my days with the faith of an egret stepping over every dark thing." At the very least, I know I won't run out of poems.

Who's with me?

Back to the Classics Challenge

This year, one of my reading goals was to read more classics. Of the 73 books I have read to date, 5 were classics. Not the best showing, really. The problem is not that I do not like classics, just that I don't seem to pick them up. But I'm going to do better next year, and in order to motivate myself, I've signed up for my first official challenge - Back to the Classics. Here's what I'm thinking of reading:

Any 19th Century Classic:
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Any 20th Century Classic
Anything by Fitzgerald
Anything by Hemingway (also part of my 26 by 26 list)
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Reread a classic of your choice
Dubliners by James Joyce
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene
The Aeneid by Virgil

A Classic Play
Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Shakespeare.

Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arther Conan Doyle

Classic Romance
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your language 
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (also on my 26 by 26 list)
The Illiad or The Odyssey by Homer

Classic Award Winner
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Pulitzer, 1947)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Pulitzer, 1940)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre (Edgar, 1965)

Read a Classic set in a Country that you will not visit during your lifetime
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

I'm sure my list will change as the year progresses, but at least it's a starting point. As an added bonus, I own the majority of these titles already, so I can at least work on my continued to goal to read books I already own.

What classics are you hoping to read next year? Will you participate in a challenge to reach your goal?

26 by 26: Reading all of Ernest Hemingway & Completing War and Peace.

Confession: I'm one of those annoying people that always has to have a plan. I don't do well with spontaneous. I like to have a goal and be working towards it. I like to have a milestone in mind and moving in that direction.

And so when I woke up this winter and realized that I lacked a goal - or goals, even - I decided to make some up. Taking inspiration from my dear friend Emily and the wonderful blogger Mighty Girl, I formulated a list of 26 things to do before I turn 26. I now have 2 years, 3 months and 11 days to figure out how I'm going to fly an airplane, learn how to sabre open a bottle of champagne (check!), make 100 lovely things, and make a successful souffle, among other things.

Of course, I am a bookworm. My list could not exist without some bookish goals. I contemplated selecting a list of the "Great Books" and completing all of them, but given my distaste for reading lists, I balked at my own suggestion. Instead, I netted out with two bookish items on my list of 26: one to complete a daunting, challenging novel, and one to read one author's entire body of work.

The first was a quick decision: War and Peace. I purchased a copy of this title in January intending to participate in the year-long War and Peace readalong hosted by Kalen and Ann. I haven't cracked the spine yet. I figure I can manage this sometime in the next few years, right?

The second took some deliberating, though. I definitely wanted an author who had written multiple books, and preferably in different mediums (short stories, perhaps?). I wanted an author that interested me. I did not want an author with such a dauntingly large library as to prove cumbersome or impossible. After much deliberating, and input from my husband and my father, I landed on Ernest Hemingway. I'm halfway through my first book in this endeavor - A Moveable Feast - and so far, I'm not disappointed.

What about you? If you were to pick one author to read from start to finish, who would it be? How do you feel about Hemingway? Any suggestions for which Hemingway title I should pick up next?

Reflecting on 2010: Reading

Yesterday, I took a look back at what I deemed some of my personal blogging highlights in 2010. Posts that made me think, and sparked commentary, and were a pleasure to look back on.

Today I turn my attention to my reading highlights of the year - the best and the worst, and even the middling. I'm following Greg Zimmerman of The New Dork Review of Books in lumping these into lists of two, because I must be cynical like him and assume we all have the attention span of a gnat. That and we're all sick of "Best of 2010" lists (personally, I stopped reading any but other blogger's lists, because they do get old). Greg's list, by the way, is probably more worth checking out than what's below.



New Literary Fiction

Day for Night: Clever, unique, thought-provoking, stimulating, rich, deep, thoughtful. 'Nough said.

Letter to My Daughter: One of the first books I read this year, and still with me today. Short but poignant, George Bishop perfectly captures the turmoil-ed relationship between mother and teenage daughter.

(If I allowed myself three in a category, I'd have to put One Day by David Nicholls here, too).

Backlist Fiction (aka did I really wait until now to read this book?)

Shadow of the Wind: This might be the ultimate thriller/mystery/literary novel for booklover's: one part ode to the power of books, one part powerful romance, one part twisting mystery.

Ragtime: E.L. Doctorow is a true master of words. But then, we all knew that already.



Memoir

Traveling with Pomegranates: I found this book so enjoyable - and so timely in my own life - that I couldn't even review it. I was far too biased to give it any kind of accurate assessment. The memoir, written by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, explores the relationship between a just-turned-50-year-old mother and her 20-something-just-engaged daughter. Timely, indeed. Worth the read for any mother or daughter. What's more, it sheds a lot of light on Kidd's first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, which I also enjoyed thoroughly this year.

The Happiness Project: Gretchen Rubin's memoir of her year of happiness resolutions avoids the common trap of self-help books in that it is never prescriptive or preachy. Gretchen's Happiness Project blog is also worth checking out.


Horror/Sci-Fi

Neverland: I don't read a lot of horror, and this is why: a well-executed horror book makes you want to sleep with the lights on, never stay home alone, and bury your head under your pillow all at once. Poorly executed horror is just painful. Douglass Clegg stands firmly in the first camp. (Reviewed on Bookgasm).

The Passage: Justin Cronin hit the nail on the head with this one, combining post-apocalyptic America with government conspiracy, a creepy, prescient little girl, vampires, a spreading virus, and a battle for survival. I absolutely cannot wait for the sequel to The Passage.

---

Overall, I think I read about 60 books this year, and reviewed 36. Of these, a mere four were non-fiction. Two - two! - were classics (Alice in Wonderland and Dickens' Christmas stories), though I did listen to Pride and Prejudice, as well. I have a decent balance of male and female authors, but predominantly white (if not all?). Three were re-reads (two from the Wheel of Time series). Of the non-classics and non-audio, maybe 10 were backlist titles.

Based on this, my goals for 2011 include more:

• Non-fiction
• Classics
• Non-white authors (recommendations, anyone?)
• Re-reads of my favorite authors
• Backlist selections from my bookshelves
• Backlist selections from favorite authors
• Books lent or recommended by friends and family - remember, books are social currency, and as much as I enjoy pushing my own recommendations on willing or unwilling listeners, I have to start to take more advice as well.
  

Not very specific goals, I know, but I don't do well with strict to-read lists. Consider these more like guidelines to influence my next book of choice.

What were your favorites of 2010? What did you learn about yourself as a reader by your selections this year? What are your goals for 2011?