Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Goal Exceeded

In 2010 I read 6 books. Six.

Ok, so maybe I read a few more, but I'm not counting bedtime stories. These were books for me. Books read for pleasure and information gathering and just for fun. Six books. Six. This pathetic little number made me sad, dismayed, and a bit angry. To be frank, I was appalled. How did I let this happen? Me? The girl who can read a 700 page book in 2 days? I could give a lot of reasons for the decline in number of books read, like I went back to work full-time, I spent a lot of time in the car ferrying kids back and forth and I hate audio books, I am exhausted, etc etc etc. Who cares what the reasons are, Lizzie, what are you going to do about it going forward?

So for 2011, I set a goal to read 52 books. I thought one a week was reasonable and left some leeway for the short reads that might take a day or two and the longer ones that might take more than a week. The important thing was I set a goal and I put a reminder out there to help me do it, namely my account on Shelfari.

Reading has always brought me great pleasure and making a conscious effort to put it back into my life just made me happy happy happy. There were books I adored (The Ten Year Nap, Elizabeth I, Madame Tussaud, Still Alice, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Perfumes: The Guide), books that freaked me out but kept me turning the pages to find out what happened next (Room, Faithful Place, Her Fearful Symmetry), books that I could take or leave (we won't single those out because opinion is subjective) and books I hated (I stopped reading them).

I'm happy to say that as of today I've read 55 books, so I've surpassed my goal and there are still 4 months left in the year. Yay me!

Current book: Re-reading all 7 Harry Potters in succession. I'm on Chamber of Secrets now.

Next challenge: get needlework back into my life on a regular basis...

If You Shouldn't Go Grocery Shopping While Hungry

clearly you shouldn't be bringing 2 hungry boys along either. A trip for 3 things resulted in 5 bags and $125...

I Just Found

a big bag of Halloween lollipops in the back of my cupboard. Clearly it is time for tidying and reorganization! What does it say about me that I hovered over the garbage can for several minutes and then put it back. Lollipops don't go bad, do they?