I don’t do new year’s resolutions because let’s face it, they’re lame. We make promises to ourselves that we’ll eat less, exercise more, quit drinking, smoking…whatever. But a date on a calendar isn’t going to help us do these things. Something has to happen in our lives to start us off, to drive us from the inside. So yeah, I know I need to lose some weight (what else is new?), find my bliss, meditate, do yoga and generally be a better fucking person (less swearing too, probably, but fuck it). I’ll get around to it when I can. STOP JUDGING ME CALENDAR.
One thing I do want to do this year is make a concerted effort to read a wider variety of books. For many years I’ve been ensconced in the world of romance novels. I ventured out only occasionally to read my other favorite genre, thriller/mystery, and pretty much slunk back into my comforting romance land when the gore of crime became too much. I occasionally read or reread a classic but that was about it.
So this year I’m going to broaden my scope. I’ve set myself the challenge on Goodreads to read 50 books in 2017. That’s over 3 a month and with my schedule I might not make it but I’m going to push towards it with books I ordinarily wouldn’t read or that I’ve always wanted to read and have never gotten around to picking up. I started off the year with a memoir (Jimmy Barnes’s Working Class Boy, and oh boy did I start the year off with a doozy–raw, messy, emotional and powerful. A bit like the man himself. You can read my review of it if you want), then a thriller (huge MEH) and now something by Catherine Deveney, an author I’ve been intrigued by but never read. I’m beginning by trying a few different genres, with the ultimate aim of tackling my ‘bucket list’ of books.
The beginnings of my bucket list looks
thus:
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
Something by Stephen King besides On Writing but I can’t do possessed clowns or anything truly terrifying so I’m looking for direction here
The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy [I know the jokes, never read the book]
Liane Moriarty – who I’ll tackle when I think my sensitive, damaged author’s heart can handle the writer’s envy I feel sure I’ll experience when I read someone contemporary who is so vastly better than I at what she does.
Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher. Why did I wait until she died before I got around to buying Postcards from the Edge? (Wishful Drinking was sold out)
So that’s my kinda sorta bucket list. There are more I’m not thinking of, but I didn’t make a resolution to be more organised and coherent, so I guess we’re outta luck.
What are you reading this year? Any books on your bucket list?
Sami