Happy New Year from the southern wilds of West Virginia and the Coolest Small Town in America (2011)! Here we are at the start of another ring around the sun and already I've over-committed my reading, but so far, it's going all right.
Last year, I posted this list of twenty-four books I planned to read, and I only got through four of them. My reading veered in other directions to forty-eight books not on that list. Oh, well.
I'm not going to write a list this year. I'm going to go where the reading leads me. I did set a Reading Challenge goal on goodreads, and I've read one book toward that goal so far and started three others. In case you're curious, here they are.
The Book I've Read
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The Books I'm Reading
I'll confess. I'm reading Gloria Steinem's My Life on the Road because of Our Shared Shelf, Emma Watson's feminist reading group on goodreads. Ninety-six pages in, I'm hooked. Ms. Steinem weaves her own story together with that of the feminist movement as she's experienced it, as well as with the stories of those people who have had some impact, great or small, on her journey thus far.
I happened upon this copy of Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg in a pile of free things and wasn't sure I'd get around to reading it. Halfway through, the book has traveled from rural Appalachia to New York City to southern Texas. From family harmony to near-disastrous discord, the story of The Carter Family, unknown to most of their listeners in the first half of the twentieth century, endures through their music, which lives on in their own recordings and in covers by dozens of musicians since.
Essays of E.B. White has been sitting on my bookshelf for over a year probably. I picked it up on the last day of a library book sale because I've always liked Charlotte's Web so I thought I'd like his essays just as well. They meander through various aspects of living. I cried over "Death of a Pig" and laughed over other parts. It's slow going, not through any fault of its own but because I've been distracted by other reading.
My other major reading commitment is a Bible in a Year program with my church. We're in Genesis and Matthew now, with a reading from Psalms and Proverbs every day. I'm a day behind and had better catch up so I don't fall a month behind, which is what happened in December.
So there we are. Goodreads tells me I'm a book behind on my reading goal so I'd best get back to it. What are you reading this year? This weekend?
I can't make any promises about regularity of posting or to post anything of great interest. I could write about work, but that would either sound like an ad campaign for upcoming productions or a general lament about the never-ending nature of fundraising, neither of which would be particularly thrilling (though we do have an exciting season lined up, including the world premiere of a new musical and the return of an Emmy Award-winning actor).
In any case, I hope your year did not begin with a raging head cold but that it will involve a variety of interesting reading.
