December Reading Plans & Year-End Goals

Somehow the end of the year is less than four weeks away, so it’s time to start getting realistic about what I can read before 2018 begins. I wish I was the sort of person who was always reading books 4+ months before the release date and setting trends, but I’ve only read three 2018 releases so far, and it’s doubtful I’ll get to more than another handful before the end of the year. Any that I do read and can recommend I will round up briefly in a couple weeks or so.

I’m at least feeling pleased with myself for resuming and/or finishing all but two of the 14 books I had on hold as of last month; one I finally DNFed (The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen) and another I’m happy to put off until the new year (Paradise Road: Jack Kerouac’s Lost Highway and My Search for America by Jay Atkinson – since he’s recreating the journey taken for On the Road, I should look over a copy of that first). Ideally, the plan is to finish all the books I’m currently reading to clear the decks for a new year.

 

Some other vague reading plans for the month:

I might do a Classic of the Month (I’m currently reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin) … but a Doorstopper isn’t looking likely unless I pick up Hillary Clinton’s Living History. However, there are a few books of doorstopper length pictured in the piles below.

Christmas-themed books. The title-less book with the ribbon is Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak, a Goodreads giveaway win. I think I’ll start that plus the Amory today since I’m going to a carol service this evening. On Kindle: A Very Russian Christmas, a story anthology I read about half of last year and might finish this year.

Winter-themed books. On Kindle: currently reading When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow by Dan Rhodes; Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard is to be read. (The subtitle of Spufford’s book is “Ice and the English Imagination”.)

As the holidays approach, I start to daydream about what books I might indulge in during the time off. (I’m giving myself 11 whole days off of editing, though I may still have a few paid reviews to squeeze in.) The kinds of books I would like to prioritize are:

Absorbing reads. Books that promise to be thrilling (says the person who doesn’t generally read crime thrillers); books I can get lost in (often long ones). On Kindle: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

Cozy reads. Animal books, especially cat books, generally fall into this category, as do funny books and children’s books. My mother and I love Braun’s cat mysteries; I read them all starting when I was about 11. I’ve never reread any, so I’d like to see how they stand up years later. Goodreads has been trying to recommend me Duncton Wood for ages, which is funny as I’ve had my eye on it anyway. My husband read the series when he was a kid and we still own some well-worn copies. Given how much I loved Watership Down and Brian Jacques’ novels as a child, I’m hoping it’s a pretty safe bet.

Books I’ve been meaning to read for ages. ’Nuff said. On Kindle: far too many.

And, as always, I’m in the position of wishing I’d gotten to many more of this year’s releases. In fact, there are at least 22 books from 2017 on my e-readers that I still intend to read:

• A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved Its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement by Philip Ackerman-Leist
• In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende
• The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst
• The Day that Went Missing by Richard Beard
• The Best American Series taster volume (skim only?)
• The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne*
• Guesswork: A Memoir in Essays by Martha Cooley
• The Night Brother by Rosie Garland
• Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
• The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson
• Eco-Dementia by Janet Kauffman [poetry]
• The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy
• A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life by Lauren Marks
• Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer by Antoinette Truglio Martin
• Homing Instinct: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm by Sarah Menkedick
• One Station Away by Olaf Olafsson
• Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry
• Memory’s Last Breath: Field Notes on My Dementia by Gerda Saunders
• See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
• What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories by Laura Shapiro
• Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward*

* = The two I most want to read, and thus will try hardest to get to before the end of the year. But the Boyne sure is long.

[The 2017 book I most wanted to read but never got hold of in any form was The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas.]

 

Are there any books from my stacks or lists that you want to put in a good word for?

How does December’s reading look for you?