The New Year Approaches

Generally speaking, I don't make New Year's Resolutions. I've tried in the past, but end up deciding not to bother by the 4th or 5th of January. Not because I've already botched them up, but because when I really sit and think about it, they just seem pointless. I'm either going to make up my mind to do something or I'm not, calling it a New Year's Resolution doesn't change anything - except perhaps to encourage more guilt if I don't end up sticking to it or to free me from guilt if I don't end up sticking to it, depending on my current frame of mind. (If you're wondering about the difference, there's the "Resolutions are dumb anyway so it doesn't matter" mindset or the "Sheesh, if I can't even keep a New Year's Resolution..." Sometimes I remark to myself that should I ever decide to convert to Catholicism, I have the guilt thing well and truly covered.)

So with the New Year breathing down my neck (fun New Year's Eve plans? Sitting at home, probably watching a movie. Possibly managing to stay up until 12:01, but that's not a given. Yeah, I'm a party girl.) I began to ponder New Year's Resolutions again. I still don't think I'm going to make any, but I do think I'm going to put together a 2007 Reading List.

Generally, I read what comes to hand when I'm in need of a new book at either up in my library at the bookstore. Sometimes this results in really good reading (current book: re-reading the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle treasury) and sometimes it results in not-so-good reading (Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is in direct avoidance of the biography which shall not be named which has managed to capture my rapt attention all the way up to page 39. Two to three paragraphs at a go.) With this slap-dash approach to reading, I end up with a long mental list of books that I intend to read (or re-read) that somehow never manage to find their way off the shelves and actually into my hands. Some of this, I admit freely, is because the things that I intend to read are also things that, while I want to read them, I also probably should read them. Which means they're non-fiction. And non-fiction has one little aspect to it that generally makes my spirit quail: reality.

Books, for me, are generally my mechanism for escaping reality and launching myself back into a magical world of make-believe. Books are, if you will, Mr. Rogers' trolley or a sprinkling of fairy dust from Tinkerbell. So to read a book that I know right off the bat isn't likely to do this is challenging to me. But I suppose it's about time I took up the challenge.

2007 isn't going to become the "Year of Non-Fiction", have no fear on that score. I think I'd as soon give up reading all together. What it will become, I hope, is "The Year I Actually Gave Non-Fiction A Shot."

So, look for my 2007 Book List to appear soonishly on my sidebar, and if you have suggestions or recommendations from either variety (fiction or non), let me know. I can't promise they'll make the list, but I can promise to seriously consider it.