After turning in my best reading year ever, it felt like 2014 got off to a really slow start. At the end of the first week I had only completed one book and it was a Little House on the Prairie read aloud I’d started with the boys in December! David enjoyed the lead and gloated about his ever increasing list while I grumbled about my lack of focus. (In retrospect, I think my reading time was spent catching up on Downton Abbey. So THAT’S what everybody’s been talking about these recent years! Book literacy has significant impact on my television literacy!!!)
I flew to Oregon by myself the second weekend in January and not having to manage boy details, I got to spend both flights reading. I found the groove. And so in the end I turn in a really nice January list. These are my favorites:
Line Dance. I LOVE Barbara Crooker’s poetry. (I took a 4 week poetry class last fall which moved poetry into the top tier of my genre priorities these days. I found Crooker in November and now have several of her collections thanks to birthday and Christmas lists.)
Diana Wynne Jones. Really smart, funny, accessible fantasy. Shades of Harry Potter without the darkness? Ryan says, “she’s really good with magic” and he’s so right. We read her Howl’s Moving Castle series in the fall and we’re on the second volume of The Chronicles of Chrestomanci now. Lots of fun! Many thanks to my sister Alyson for getting us started.
Apparently I’ve got a theme going with The Silent Wife and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Gone Girl is sitting on the table to be read. Just to be clear, I’m NOT selling stuff to hire an assassin (The Silent Wife) and 15+ years into my marriage I believe I can say alongside Ann Patchett, “….with the full force of his life, with the example of his kindness and vigilance, his good sense and equanimity, he makes me a better person. ”
I am grateful.
And gloating. I read 7 books in January. He read 6.
