Old year, new year, and what I read/plan to read

I usually write a post about New Year's resolutions, and I'm sure that's coming sometime soon, but I'm kind of stalled on those resolutions right now. I wrote them, as I always do. I took a piece of paper and drew a line down the middle of it. On the left I wrote all the things I could think of that might be called "accomplishments" in 2018. On the right I wrote all my plans for 2019, 24 resolutions in all. And then I looked at them and I felt really really depressed. These plans aren't fun, they're a slog. They're things like "Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night" and "Lift weights at least 2 times a week." There are plans for housecleaning and plans for fixing the house and yard, plans for losing weight and plans for saving money. It's all so ghastly that it makes me want to run away screaming.

So, instead, this post is going to be about one of the very few "resolutions" (and "accomplishments") that's fun: read a whole lot of books, with 78 being the specific goal for 2019. In 2018 I read 86 books, so 78 is not unreasonable, though I won't necessarily make it -- but if I don't, that just means I'll have less fun than I'm hoping to. Reading continues to be my absolute favorite activity in life. I'm so sorry that my own boys don't like to read, but they like to be read to, and maybe someday after I'm gone they'll make books a part of their lives. I cannot imagine wanting to go on living if I couldn't read (or at least listen to) books.

Specific goals for those 78 books? Not really, though I would like to read a lot of the books that have been in my "to read" pile for years now. I'd like to either read them, or get rid of them, make room for other books that I really do want to read. Beyond that the goal is to read whatever pleases me, read widely, read things out of my comfort zone -- but nothing that makes me unhappy (unless it's for the book group or my kids want to read it).

And here is a review of what I read in 2018, by category.

Children's Books (29): In past years I haven't counted children's books, but in 2017 I started to, and in 2018 I went all out. Almost everything on this list I read aloud to the kids, though we did also read a few adult books and I read one or two of these on my own.

• In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall
• Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
• Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
• Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein
• Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein
• Schoolhouse in the Woods by Rebecca Caudill
• Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race by Chris Grabenstein
• Dragon Overnight by Mlnowski, Myracle, & Jenkins
• Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill by Maud Hart Lovelace
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
• The Lost Rainforest by Eliot Schrefer
• Up and Down the River by Rebecca Caudill
• PIE by Sarah Weeks
• Matilda by Roald Dahl
• Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
• A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
• Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick
• Story Thieves by James Riley
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall
• Story Thieves: The Stolen Chapters by James Riley
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
• Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley & Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg
• Story Thieves: Secret Origins by James Riley
• Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colsen

Books for the Book Group (9): My book group tries to meet every month, but sometimes life interferes. Our choices are pretty random: mostly we read whatever someone in the group has just heard about. This is, as always, an eclectic list: fiction, nonfiction, mystery, science fiction. My favorite might have been Annihilation. I really wanted to read Lincoln in the Bardo, but ended up being disappointed by it.

• January: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• February: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
• March: The Baker's Passage by Colleen Jiron
• April/May: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• June: The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone
• July: Death in Cyprus by M.M. Kaye
• August: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• September/October: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• November/December: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Mysteries/Thrillers (18): Usually my biggest list, but this year it was eclipsed by the children's books. I find that after all these years of reading mysteries, I'm growing a little tired of them, and have been choosing more psychological thrillers, with Tana French a current favorite. I read her first standalone novel, The Witch Elm, right before Christmas and was so disappointed with it. I hope she goes back to her series.

• Faithful Place by Tana French
• Broken Harbor by Tana French
• Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton
• The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
• Call for the Dead by John Le Carre
• Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah
• Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
• The Secret Place by Tana French
• Song of the Lion by Anne Hillerman
• Death in St. Petersburg by Tasha Alexander
• The Trespasser by Tana French
• The Likeness by Tana French
• A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis
• A Minister's Ghost by Phillip DePoy
• The Witch's Grave by Phillip DePoy
• A Country of Old Men by Joseph Hansen
• The Witch Elm by Tana French

SciFi/Fantasy/Horror (7): In 2017 science fiction was a big part of my list, but this year I took a slight break from it. I enjoyed discovering Jeff VanderMeer, though. After reading Borne, I convinced the book group to read Annihilation (no one liked it but me) and then went on and read the rest of the Southern Reach Trilogy on my own.

• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Emergence by C.J. Cherryh
• A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons
• Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer
• Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
• Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

General Fiction (9): This is a seriously random list, nothing caught my fancy and led me to read more of one writer or another. The two Pyms are from my annual re-reading of some of her books, every February.

• Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson
• August by Judith Rossner
• Jane & Prudence by Barbara Pym
• Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym 
• Help for the Haunted by John Searles
• Contenders by Erika Krouse
• The Novel Habits of Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith
• Journey into Christmas by Bess Streeter Aldrich
• What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

Memoirs/Biographies (Presidential and other) (10): I like biographies and memoirs, but none of these really thrilled me, though Lost Cat was fun. I read four Presidential biographies this year, but they were all short bios, just checking minor presidents off my list. I'm planning to read a longer biography of Pierce this year, and will also try to read one of Buchanan and then start reading about Lincoln.

• The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (and Learning to Tell the Truth about It) by Patty Dann
• The Blue Jay's Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood by Louise Erdrich
• James K. Polk by John Seigenthaler
• Zachary Taylor by John S.D. Eisenhower
• Calypso by David Sedaris (is this where this belongs, or do I need a humor category?)
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Millard Fillmore by Ted Gottfried
• Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology by Caroline Paul
• Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt
• Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max

General Nonfiction (4): I didn't read a lot of regular nonfiction this year, though it is true that nonfiction and memoir are really hard to separate these days. Every one of these four books contained some personal stuff. I found Lauren Slater's book on antidepressants and other mind drugs very interesting (if depressing), and I would recommend No-Drama Discipline to any parent.

• Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators by Tea Krulos
• Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds by Lauren Slater
• Cat vs Cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat by Pam Johnson-Bennett
• No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson