It was a good year for books. Book writing, book publishing…book reading. Thanks to the incentive of the Goodreads 2014 Reading Challenge, I read 32 book this past year — the highest total I can recall since my days as a tome-weary English major!
Apparently, I am not alone…in 2014, the Goodreads Reading Challenge had 678,678 participants with over 18,898,565 books read. If even half of those were tactile, printed books, my old-school heart can rest easy for another year.
Looking back over my own list of Books Read for the year, it’s hard to call out just one as a favorite. Apparently, I read a great number by Alice Hoffman, eight in total. Of those, I would most certainly share the dog-earred Green Heart, The Museum of Extraordinary Things and The Dovekeepers.
Other favorites included The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, The Gravity of Birds by Tracy Guzeman, and Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton.
My goal of reading more from poets paid off — Adrienne Rich, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins — as did my goal of reading more books in general. Happily.
I am still wandering through The Paris Wife by Paula McLain and falling in love with the time period — Paris in the twenties — and Ernest Hemingway, of all people (and all writers). Will it inspire a detour from this year’s magic realism? We’ll see…
Where ever the new year takes me, I’ll be signing up for the next Goodreads Reading Challenge. Will you?
Woo! Good for you! I managed to read a couple of books myself this year, but none of them were foldy books, sorry. I’m definitely a Kindle girl. :)
Old-school book person says: I can show you how to fold the Kindle…LOL.
Sorry, actually it’s just an app on my iPad, and it’s way too expensive to fold. :-)
I have already read a bunch of these. I am trying to read more British books because of what I teach, but keep relapsing into others–my favorites–Latin American, Middle Eastern, Native American with some books from Indian (as in that country) thrown in.
Reading is reading is good for body and soul. It’s not just the subject matter…but the pace and time allowed for its slow pleasure. At least that’s how it feels lately…
Hi, Jen! And wishing you a very happy New Year!
You do such a beautiful job with this blog, and to all you do (love the snowflakes; looking forward to falling cherry blossoms soon)… Thanks for bringing so much beauty and wisdom into our lives!
XO,
C
Same to you, Carol. Miss hearing your (writing) voice…come back to the blog world, will you soon? xoxo