Where do I begin? It has been a whole month since I posted anything at this blog. I'm really not quite ready for an intensive reading wrap-up for 2014. For one,thing, I still have four more reading days left in this year!
One thing I can say is that every year I fall more in love with books and with the act of reading. Books are one of my deepest consolations, they are my respite from the trials and tribulations of daily life, and they are a rich source of nourishment--intellectual, spiritual, and emotional.
This year I am very close to having read eighty books (I'm hoping to reach that mark in the next few days). That doesn't count all the reading I do for my teaching job (so many *parts* of books, essays, excerpts, etc.). But my goal was one hundred--I'd need to read much shorter books or spend more hours reading!
At the moment I'm immersed in reading for the units I'm about to teach. Specifically, I've been reading Walden and other words by Thoreau, and background materials about Frederick Douglass in preparation for teaching The Narrative of Frederick Douglass.
Meanwhile, I have stacks and stacks of books I need to read or want to read or both.
Does anyone else get stuck in a particular literary period or genre and not know how to get out? I've been thinking so hard about Thoreau and Transcendentalism and slave narratives and American literature of the Antebellum and Civil War periods. I feel like I'm living in that time and can't leave. Or if I take a strange leap (say to George R.R. Martin territory) I might lose the ideas that are coalescing in my brain.....
When we get back to school after the New Year holiday, our students (I'm team teaching with a Social Studies teacher) are staging a funeral for Abraham Lincoln. They are going to give eulogies, dress in black (I hope a few will come in full mourning), have condolence cards, etc, Many of the students are coming in character (Frederick Douglass is one of the orators). I can't wait to see what the kids will come up with.
I guess one of my New Year's resolutions should be not to let my blog languish. I have so many books that I've been wanting to tell you about. For instance, Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy, and Jo Ann Beard's amazing Boys of My Youth. And I still haven't written a post about China Mieville's Perdido Street Station.
Did you get any great books for the holidays? My daughter gave me Neil Gaiman's American Gods for Christmas. And, to be honest, I gave myself a few books. Also, my husband got a book that I'm secretly planning to steal. More on that later.
What did you read in 2014? What are you planning to read as the year closes? I have a superstitious feeling that I should plan to finish the year with a very special book.
5 comments:
I didn't get any books for Christmas but I gave plenty of them. Happy New Year!
@bermudaonion-We book bloggers already own so many books, I think people are afraid to give us any more! I gave books as gifts this year too. I love to share a favorite book! Happy New Year!
Hope you've been enjoying your holidays! I am also looking forward to getting back to a regular blog routine in the New Year. It's just hard when life is so hectic isn't it? Anyway, yay, for all of your books read this year. Would love to hear about your favorites.
@Iliana- Trying to get my blogging mojo back! Will definitely have a post about my favorite books of 2014...
Once in a while I'll find myself almost accidentally picking up books that have a theme but I'm not sure I've ever really gotten stuck in a period. I kind of work to avoid that so that I don't "lose" one book by reading something similar right away.
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