Best:
Julie Cross's Letters to Nowhere series, which I just read over the past 2 days.
Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl which is now one of my favorite books of all time.
Stephen King's The Green Mile.
Worst:
Michael Crichton's Rising Sun.
Total books read in 2015: 21 (yikes -- that is really low).
I'm not sure that number is accurate, but I am trying to do a better job of tallying my reads on my own instead of relying on Goodreads and Shelfari. I am hesitant to set reading goals or resolutions for 2016 in terms of the number of books I want to read because I need to be writing more than reading (although I recently read an agent's advice to authors who said that we should actually be reading more than writing -- I like that advice!), but there is one resolution I found on BookTube that I am definitely going to implement: Read 5 Before I Buy. I own hundreds of novels I have not read. Seriously. Actually, I'm going to count them now.
481. Wow. And that's just novels. I have at least that many nonfiction books that I haven't read too. So I probably have around 1,000 books just in my apartment that I haven't read. That's not counting books in storage or at my mom's. So really I should read 100 books before I buy another, but that's not reasonable, because clearly I am more addicted to buying books than I am to actually reading them. I have gotten MUCH better about not buying books, but I am now keeping track of all the books I read AND where they came from (my collection, bought, loaners, library books, etc.) because I really need to get a handle on this. Again, I know book buying has decreased significantly over the past year or two: I amassed most of these books when I was studying for comps because I was reading so much stuff for school and I couldn't read fiction, so I just bought tons of novels. In a weird way, it motivated me, sort of like writing fiction motivated me to finish my dissertation; it was like -- okay, once you accomplish this goal, then you can read all of this fiction that right now you can only stare at. Of course, I haven't read nearly as much as I have wanted to or thought I would since then, obviously. I have had way too many reading slumps where I just couldn't get into any books, and then just gave up for a while. Watching way too much TV has also contributed to my lack of reading, since I seem completely incapable of doing anything but that in the evening now. I'm not even going to talk about changing my evening routine because I am really sick of saying I'm going to do it, and then doing the same thing for like years now. But I will say that I would like to make myself get in bed sooner and read. That would not only help me read more, but I think it would help me sleep better too. That seems possible when I'm not watching a show I really like, and I just finished Gossip Girl, so hopefully I won't get sucked into anything else for at least a minute, so I can build some better habits before the semester starts (in like 2 weeks -- eeeek!).
One thing I have been doing over break that I would like to continue if possible is dedicating a chunk of time every week to reading fiction. Lately that has been Sunday: usually I stay in bed and read until it's time to go to yoga at 1:30, so that generally gets me through at least half of a novel. If I am able to continue that throughout the semester, then I will read at least 2 books a month, which will put me over my total for last year.
So, with that said, I think I'm going to go back to reading my book now. I'm currently reading Finding Our Balance by Lauren Hopkins, another gymnastics novel, and the only other one in existence as far as I know besides the Letters to Nowhere series. Someone really needs to get on that.
