Welcome 2020! It is nice to see you!
I seem to be having laptop issues. I am going to take the fact that I have been able to connect to a local indie coffeeshop's wifi (what better place to start thew New Year anyway!) as a good sign (rather than take the glass half empty view of what a way to start the new year!).
So things are a bit mixed up. I had planned to share my 2019 favorites and then my list of new prompts, but I will go in reverse order this year. I suspect this year is going to be full of all sorts of new starts, new habits and new traditions. I will try to take that in the spirit of a fresh start after a very unhappy end to last year.
By the way, thank you so very much for the kind words and cards about my mom. It was rough going last year and it will still be uphill for a while, but your thoughtfulness is so very appreciated. As soon as I can get back to a normal connection at home I will reply to all the comments, but please be assured they have been read and I thank you!
I have decided to clear the decks so to speak with my reading. I have a pile of books from last year that I will sort through and decide which I will try and finish this year and which can quietly go back to their places in book piles or shelves for a later attempt. This is my tentative pile of new starts with a couple of books started last year.
I am ready to get back to Kinsey Millhone's adventures. Next up is P is for Peril.
I have gotten away from the classics (save for what I would call modern classics, which are good, too). An easy start and maybe a little bit of a cheat. Did you see the forthcoming TV adaptation by Andrew Davies of Jane Austen's last novel, Sanditon? She never finished it. I think a mere 60 page fragment is all that exists. I found Sanditon by Jane Austen and Kate Riordan (who I have read before) at the bookstore recently. I will look for the Jane Austen fragment and read it alongside the reworked work. A nice way to ease back into the classics--reading Jane Austen and then watching the movie later this month.
I didn't finish Decembers prompt, Len Deighton's Berlin Game, so I will continue to enjoy it this month. I think there are three sets of three books and I already have the second one on hand.
I am not really setting out any goals this year (save my Good Reads Challenge), but there are a few things I would like to try to do more of this year. Classics reading is one. Another is to get back to chunky reads. I have a whole stack (are you surprised) to pull from. Dorothy Whipple's The Priory (coming in at 536 pages) is tentatively my first choice for the year. I have wanted to read it for ages.
I started Signe Pike's The Lost Queen last year. I listened to a podcast about it last year and was quickly sold. It is the first of three planned books. Everyone who has read it seems to have raved about it. It is a story in the vein of The Mists of Avalon.
My nonfiction choice is not completely firm, but I keep eyeing Code Name Lise by Larry Loftis, so it has been added to the pile. You know I am always up for a good spy story--even better that this is based on an actual person.
I could not pass up a review copy of Anita Abriel's The Light after the War about two Jewish women who survive the Holocaust, which is based on a true story.
And there at the bottom of the pile is a graphic novel (nonfiction in this case)-Nora Krug's Belonging, which I have wanted to read ever since I first heard about it. I would like to try and read ten graphic novels over the course of the year.
We'll see how it goes. I am not making any plans really other than the few I mention here and only by way of starting out the new reading year. I fully expect that I will veer off the paths I set now, and that is okay.
My Good Reads 'challenge' is to read 83 books this year. I managed to read 80 in 2019, which is what I set out to do, so I thought it fitting to try and better that by just a few books. It really helped to log books last year and watch the covers add up--see what I had read and where my reading was taking me.
******
So that leaves my dozen prompts to help me choose a new book from my shelves in the coming months. As always, each is open to interpretation, and I may make a change if something really doesn't appeal. Randomly:
January: I've Been Meaning to Read This
February: It's a Woman's World
March: Any Book from an Old new Books List!
April: Read, Enjoy. Repeat
May: Any Green Spine
June: Exit Stage Left
July: In Sickness and in Health
August: La Dolce Vita
September: Ready for New Beginnings
October: A Month in the Country
November: Wishing Myself Somewhere New
December: Dear Diary, Dear Friend
******
It's good to start fresh! Not just a new year, but a new decade, and for me a new start to a life that went topsy turvy. What are your hopes for 2020?