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Blog Entry 11 of 13 It's Raining Cookies

I'm getting way too hung up on what to say here. I imagine I'll write about the square-jaw phenomenon, the firefighter thing, and how many times I see the library guy, and anything weird that happens when I go to the store. Something weird always happens when I go to the store. Just a couple of days ago, I used the self-checkout at Wal-Mart and didn't screw it up. So weird.

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Let's Eighty-Six This Book Thing

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Contributed by: Sarah Pottenger on 12/19/2006

Nearly a year ago, I decided to make a New Year's resolution, one that I might actually keep. I'd heard on GMA or someplace that the best way to keep your resolution is to make it fun. Kind of stinks if it's quitting smoking or losing weight. Unless it involves bribes. Those are fun.

I read a lot. I have no idea how much. A ton. I love to read, and I'm addicted to the library. And the Library Guy. But anyway . . . I made my resolution to read 100 books in 2006, and I'm here to report that unless I shut myself away and ignore everyone and everything for two weeks, I will not reach my goal.

I could do that. But my cat would die. And my family would sorely miss having my cookies on Christmas Day. Cookies which, by the way, are more like the idea of cookies right now instead of actual ones that have been made. Hey, I still have a few more days.

Instead of making cookies this morning, I finished my 86th book of 2006. It was very good. I kept a notebook through the year, writing down each book I read with a little summary and what I thought of it. Those entries get shorter and shorter as I flip through the pages. #1 which I started on New Year's, happened to be the second-most gruesome story I've ever read. And you know that coming from me, that says a lot. Velocity by Dean Koontz was gross . . . and also very compelling. I hate it when that happens.

In January, I started having back problems. I woke up on January 18 and could barely get out of bed, the pain taking my breath away. I ended up spending a lot of time laying down, and reading was all I could do. A book every day or two in January and most of February. The best book in all that time was the first one, the one I picked up and read on the 18th. The River King is my favorite book of Alice Hoffman's. I was in the mood for a little tragedy, and TRK is a nice little tragic, haunting tale of doomed romance. Um, gee, that sounds familiar. Sounds like . . . Alice Hoffman. TRK is the beautifully written story of events that take place over the course of a year at an elite New England prep school, as well as a tragedy in the school's past that bears on the present. I'm getting to be kind of a sucker for school novels. How very sad. Alice Hoffman is so talented at making me feel like I'm in the story--not just watching these people's lives play out, but standing right there, watching the leaves fall.

I read four Jodi Picoult books in the last year. I'm well on my way to reading (and having) all of hers. She's my favorite novelist. And, interestingly, Alice Hoffman is HER favorite novelist. Anyway, I read the gamut of JP, from Harvesting the Heart, her second book, to two in between, and winding up with her new one, The Tenth Circle. Talking to people at the book signing, I got the sense that people either really liked or really didn't. There wasn't much ambivalence. Probably because some people found the two different mediums (the novel and the comic book integrated into the story) distracting, or irritating, or maybe they just really hate comic books. I don't know. The comic book part was only a few pages at the end of each chapter, which didn't bother me at all. It was vintage JP: beautifully written, with kids, and lots of big moral dilemmas. I'm all a-twitter about her next book, coming out in three months, Nineteen Minutes.

I read 28 mysteries and four true-crime books. I read an entire fantasy series in two months. I carefully hid my library copy of Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, as I thought it might be callous to be seen reading it in a hospital waiting area. I read short stories, another mysterious prep school novel, and two of Stephen King's Dark Tower books. I read Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson and was very sad to put it down, and even more sad to return it to the library and have no copy of my own. I read all the Traveling Pants books and almost cried as I listened to the last one on tape. (Shut up. It was a baby being born. You would have almost cried too.) I read memoirs and sad books and bubble-head books. Kids books, funny books, a few books I wish I hadn't. I found some new favorites to add to my list, among them Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis.

I took The Big Over Easy on a road trip to Kansas to read for a second time, and realized that I had taken it on a road trip to Kansas the first time I read it. I only managed to finish 3 books in the entire month of November, between National Novel Writing Month and my brother's wedding. They were a teen novel by Meg Cabot, another Alice Hoffman, and Diane Mott Davidson's newest culinary mystery. And so far I've only finished two in December, a Wild West mystery, Holmes on the Range, and one of Sigmund Brouwer's Nick Barrett mysteries, which I love, The Lies of Saints. It took me three weeks to finish Holmes. Less than a week for Lies. I would read it on the treadmill and hardly check my time at all. When my thirty minutes was up, I'd get off the treadmill and sit and read for a little longer. He's good, that Sigmund Brouwer.

I even managed to go six months without buying any books, with barely a blip on the radar screen. You wouldn't know it from my book journal. Actually, you would, because I whined about it a lot in there.

I'm disappointed to fall short of 100. But I really have no sense of what is normal, of how many books I read in a year on average. It seemed like a good, complete number. I guess 86 is all right too. If you're going to end on a lower number, it might as well be an even one, and one with its own expression, "eighty-six."

I'm not stopping. There are, after all, eleven days left in December. I still have two library books. And secret stashes of unread books that don't fit on my shelves. And books I want to re-read. And I do have to go back to the library eventually, to return my books, and to nonchalantly look for the Library Guy as I try to hide the newest Princess Diaries book between Tony Hillerman mysteries.

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