frumiousb

All other sensible people have their book lists finished by much earlier in January. But as I noted in last weeks post, reading for me is a two-step process. I read a book and then I revisit it, recording my notes and thoughts. This year it meant that step two was several weeks behind step one. So this is why I find myself, several weeks behind, finishing up my reading summary for 2007. An extra special post for The Sunday Salon in which I prove myself once again incapable of following the rules. I promise to actually have a post about current reading later in the day.

2007 saw one major change for me in terms of how I administer my reading. Instead of keeping the reading notes in journals or the reviews on Amazon, I started using this livejournal as my key notes/review platform. I'm not sure that this made any of my readers happy. After all, the idea of the journal was counting my blessings and not counting my books. But as I have said repeatedly in this journal's four year history: This is more for me than it is for you.

Statistics

I read more Agatha Christie than any other author. Unsurprising, since she is definitely one of my favorite flavors of literary comfort food.

Total Books: 157
(You'll notice that if you believe my journal, my count ran to 159. When I was counting the reviews not in my journal, I apparently double counted two reviews as this year that were actually last year's reading.)

Speculative Fiction (46)
Mystery/Detective (27)
Fiction (Literary) (19)
Children's Literature and YA (10)
History (8)
Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir (7)
Grief and Loss (6)
Poetry (5)
Science and Technology (3)
Short Stories (3)
Thrillers (3)
Travel/Regional (3)
Business Books (2)
Essays (2)
Horror (2)
Media (2)
Cooking and Food (1)
Economics (1)
Health (1)
Journals and Diaries (1)
Medical Ethics (1)
Plays (1)
Psychology (1)
Religion and Spirituality (1)
Sociology (1)

10 Best Reads of the Year

In no particular order, and completely subjective:

• The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
  
  
• The White Man's Burden: Why The West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, William Easterly
  
  
• A Stone For A Pillow, Madeleine L'Engle
  
  
• Zwilling's Dream, Ross Feld
  
  
• All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
  
  
• A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis
  
  
• The Undergound Man, Ross Macdonald
  
  
• Tales of Love & Loss, Knut Hamsun
  
  
• The System of the World, Neal Stephenson
  
  
• Accelerando, Charles Stross

( book lists )

I'm actually fairly happy to be on my own tonight. I'm puttering through my little private rituals of Christmas. I put up my mismatched sentimental tree. I plastered my Dad's Christmas plastic sticky things to the balcony door. I've put the Santa hat on the Thai Goddess mask that hangs in the kitchen.

I even have Christmas soap. I feel that this is the ultimate in being a grownup somehow-- Christmas soap.

I cannot hang my ornaments without at least some feeling of something pricking. My eyes or my knees or my heart. If last year was supposed to me Bart and I and the happy frog in my belly, then this year was supposed to be her first Christmas. I don't want to dwell on this part of things, but those ghosts are there. The Christmases that never happened and never will.

This year, instead, I am teaching myself how to love my old ornaments again, and how to hang them on the tree with joy. I am reminding myself that I love the glitter of Christmas lights, and Christmas music. I am enjoying the clean smell of tree, and the row of seasonal candles. I may even bake some cookies before my sister arrives. Who knows?

We hold it in ourselves to be our own good family. And in the end, the nature of the world dictates that we must have that hard learning. All things pass, even good and important and beloved things. We must mourn. But we also need to have these rituals of hearth and home.

To reach for the wall with the green electric cord, and even if my hand trembles, light the lights.

I wish you all comfort and joy in the coming year. I wish you light.

I really like New Year's Resolutions. I know that it is fairly fashionable not to like them, but I really enjoy the idea of a completely arbitrary point in the year take stop of the old year and set some new goal posts for the coming year.

I'm doing this kind of late this year, but I needed some time to organize my thoughts a little bit. At least as much as they are going to get organized right now.

First of all:

2006

I guess that to say that it was not the year that I expected would be kind of an understatement. It was a really strange and change-filled year that only got more catastrophic as it progressed. The events of the last few weeks put everything in its shadow, but it started off chaotic. In 2006:

• I changed jobs and roles.
  
• B. changed jobs and roles.
  
• We bought a new house (after almost buying a houseboat).
  
• B.'s mother recovered from uterine cancer.
  
• We travelled to Las Vegas with my sister.
  
• I clocked a lot of time in Sweden for work.
  
• B. made monthly flights to Seattle.
  
• I got pregnant for the first time.
  
• I cancelled two vacations because of the pregnancy.
  
• I was hospitalized four times.
  
• I rode in an ambulance for the first time.
  
• Finished the year seriously ill and with a stillborn child.

Even without the more dramatic components, it was still a year of Big Huge Change. I had said that 2005 was the year of cancer, and nobody I knew was allowed to get cancer this year. Well, they didn't. And everyone I knew with cancer last year seems to be recovering nicely (*knocks wood*). The last thing that I expected was for my own health to fail. And honestly, getting pregnant was kind of the second-to-last-thing that I expected.

Resolutions

Last year I had quite a list. And I'm actually kind of proud to say that I kept them all-- at least until the roof fell in during November.

Partly, making this post took so long because I was not sure where on earth to begin for 2007.

In the end, I realized that I only had two big resolutions:

• Live through this.
  This includes getting my health back, emotional and physical. I have to figure out how to mourn this loss and how to go further. I need to figure out how to go back to work. I need to find a reason to keep going.
  
  
• Make no decisions except the one that needs making.
  In 2007 I will not buy property, run off with any strange men, or change careers. This sounds like a very strange thing to say, but this is the wrong time for me to make major life changes of any kind. Wise woman says: Don't buy clothes at the wrong time of the month. Wise woman also says: Don't make major life choices within 6 months of a major loss. (Evidence for this-- my first marriage.)
  
  I, we, have huge decisions that must be made this year. We have some decisions about staying childless, levels of risk, adoption vs. procreation to make. And we cannot wait very long to make them. There is not a universe in which these questions will not be enormously complicated in the year ahead, and these things will need all of my focus and attention. One of the best ways that I can take care of myself is to make sure that this gets all the time that it deserves. Other stuff is extra.

I'm kind of pissed off because a month ago 2007 looked like it was going to be the beginning of a whole new life for me. And now I know that it is going to be a long hard trek and a lot of picking up the pieces. So perhaps there's some kind of sub-resolution here about going back to the original focus of this journal and start counting my blessings again.

And, as an aside to God-- in 2007 I'm going to be watching the loopholes in what I wish for, okay?

Reads and Re-Reads in 2006

( strange, and informed by long commutes and bedrest )