New Year's Resolution: Banish the Guilt!

New Year's resolutions are not for me.  Other than my perennial resolutions to eat less, drink less, swear less; be kinder to children, animals, and old people; and to keep my room clean, I don't make resolutions as a rule.

But there is a bookish resolution that has been nagging at me for a while.  So, inspired by a great essay, On Guilt and Reading, on Bella's Bookshelves, I am taking the Reading Resolution plunge.  My resolution is to tackle my Guilt List and stop taking books if I don't think I'll get to them within a month or two -- without feeling guilty about it!

Let me back up.  I never feel guilty about the (according to my LibraryThing tags) 1196 books on my TBR shelves. Or even the fact that I converted a spare bedroom to a library just to hold them for me. I figure that as far as time-sucking, money-gobbling hobbies go, buying more books than I can read is pretty benign.  I could have a boat, for example.

What I do feel guilt about is my stack of books from publishers, authors, and publicists that I don't get around to reading.  True, I didn't ask for all of them -- some just arrived out of the blue. But most of them are books I asked for or agreed to take and now, months later, they are still sitting there.  This "Guilt List" gets to me.

Right now, the books on my Guilt List are, in roughly the order I received them:

1. The Evolution of Shadows by Jason Quinn Malott
2. Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley
3. Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz 1942-1957 by Robert Dietsche
4. An Architectural Guidebook to Portland by Bart King 
5. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
6. To the Woods: Sinking Roots, Living Lightly, and Finding True Home by Evelyn Searle Hess 
7. 42 States of Grace by Maureen Hovenkotter
8. Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert Home by Ellen Waterston
9. Fish With What You Find by Jim Gilsdorf
10. Because You Might Not Remember by Don Colburn
11. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

My resolution is to whittle this list down; to finish these books in a reasonable amount of time, although that may be longer than the generous people who gave them to me had in mind.  And, more important to my reading peace of mind, my resolution is to graciously refuse new books, unless I really know I will read them right away. 

State of the Blog, Part Two: The Authors

It is a new year, and time to assess my reading progress for the year just closed.  I approach this "winter" assessment with trepidation and excitement, since it lets me see how much progress I did -- or didn't make -- in 2010 and let's me plan ahead for 2011.  Out with the old! In with the new!

This is the second of my quarterly blog assessment posts.  This first part addressed the book lists. Part Three, coming soon, will deal with the challenges I participated in last year and joined (or plan to) this year.

My list of authors is in the right-side column.  I plan to add a few authors this year, including P. D. James and Dorothy L. Sayers.

NOTE: If you are reading the books of any of my favorite authors, please leave a comment here or on the post for that author (click on the name below or in the right-hand column) and leave a link to any related post. I will add the links on the author's page. 


I am changing the format of this post and only listing the books I read in 2010, rather than details for each author. In 2010, I read a total of 23 books by my favorite authors. The big winners were Dick Francis and Nick Hornby.

Kingsley Amis
One Fat Englishman (reviewed here)
On Drink (collective review of all 3 drinking books here)
Every Day Drinking
How's Your Glass?


Kate Atkinson
Case Histories
One Good Turn

William Boyd
The New Confessions (reviewed here)

Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow

A. J. Cronin
Three Loves (reviewed here)

Dick Francis
Second Wind (reviewed here)
Under Orders
Proof
Enquiry

Jim Harrison
The Farmer's Daughter (reviewed here)

Nick Hornby
The Polysyllabic Spree (reviewed here)
Juliet, Naked (reviewed here)
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt

David Lodge
Deaf Sentence (reviewed here)

Jack Ohman
Angler Management: The Day I Died While Fly Fishing and Other Essays (reviewed here)

Anthony Powell
Venusberg (reviewed here)

Julia Spencer-Fleming
I Shall Not Want


John Updike
The Witches of Eastwick
The Widows of Eastwick

On the other hand, I didn't read a single book by Saul Bellow, Cara Black, James Lee Burke (which surprises me), M. F. K. Fisher, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Penelope Fitzgerald, Richard Ford, John Lescroart, Elinor Lipman, Ian McEwan, Philip Roth, Martin Cruz Smith, William Styron, Anne Tyler, Simon Winchester, or P. G. Wodehouse (which really shocks me). The year went by so fast!

Teaser Tuesday: Strangers and Brothers

With success behind him, George remarked more often about a partnership "being not too far away."  For the first time, he showed some impatience about his oewn future: but he was no longer worried over Martineau.

-- Strangers and Brothers by C. P. Snow.

I am sucked into this story about a progressive young lawyer forging his career.  Even though the book was written in 1940 and set in 1928 in England, his work as a new lawyer in a small firm sounds so much like what my lawyer friends and I all went through. The long hours, case panic, difficult partners -- it's all the same!

This is the first book in Snow's 11-volume "Strangers and Brother's" series.  This volume is now published under the title George Passant, but I have an older edition with the Strangers and Brothers title. 

 

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

 

Mailbox Monday and Giveaway

It's the first Mailbox Monday of the year! Did anyone making Reading Resolutions for 2011? Do your mailboxes reflect them?

Please be sure to sign up for the giveaway, below.

MAILBOX MONDAY

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week. (Library books don’t count, but eBooks & audiobooks do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists!

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here). I am very pleased to host this month.

Please leave the link to your Mailbox Monday post with Mr. Linky. If you do not have a blog, leave your mailbox list in a comment.

GIVEAWAY

Thanks to book publicist extraordinaire, Mary Bisbee-Beek, I have THREE advanced reading copies of House Arrest by Ellen Meeropol to give away this week.

THE BOOK: House Arrest is set in Western Massachusetts and on an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine.  The story is told from the alternating points of view of Emily, Pippa, Sam, and Gina. House Arrest explores the meaning of family loyalty when beliefs conflict, and questions the necessity of sometimes breaking rules to serve justice.

The author, Ellen Meeropol, is fascinated by characters on the fault lines of political upheaval. Previous work includes a dramatic script telling the story of the Rosenberg Fund for Children which has been produced in four U.S. cities, most recently in Boston. Elli is the wife of Robert Meeropol, youngest son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. This is her first novel. She is a former nurse and independent bookstore event coordinator.

RULES: The contest is open until Sunday, January 9, 2011. To enter, do any or all of the following, but you must leave a comment for each one:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You must include a way to contact you (email or website address in your comment or available in your profile). If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner. (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway. (Posting the giveaway on your sidebar is also acceptable.) Leave a separate comment with a link to your post. (1 entry)

3. Subscribe to my rss feed, follow me on blogger, or subscribe via email (or tell me if you already are a subscriber or follower). Leave a separate comment for this. (1 entry)

4. Tweet this post on Twitter. Leave me a separate comment with your twitter user name. (1 entry)

5. Stumble this blog, digg it, technorati fave it, or link it on facebook. Leave a separate comment. (1 entry)

There are a lot of ways to enter (maximum of five entries), but you must LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each one or they will not count. I will use random.org to pick the winners from the comments.

This contest is open to entries from the U.S. and Canada only. The deadline for entry is midnight in your time zone on Sunday, January 9, 2011. I will draw and post the winner's name in my Mailbox Monday post on January 10, 2011.

MY MAILBOX

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. This is the fourth book in her Jackson Brodie series, which is my favorite mystery series. Thanks, Hachette Books!



And a big Thank You to Overlook Books who hosted a pre-Christmas giveaway of my favorite P. G. Wodehouse "Collector Editions." I was very excited to win!

A Pelican at Blandings



A Prefect's Uncle



The Man Upstairs (Collector's Edition coming soon)



I am ready to start participating in the Wodehouse Challenge.

Opening Sentence of the Day: A Study in Scarlet

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army.

-- A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Thanks to Steve Anderson, who I had coffee with when I was considering getting an iPhone, I learned that I could download a kindle app to my iPhone and have a book with me in my pocket.  So I downloaded the first Sherlock Holmes book.  I wanted to start with a free e-book, in case I didn't like it.

But I do.  It was pretty intuitive, and I learned how to set the color to "sepia" so the background is offwhite and the text is brown, so it is a little softer to look at.  And I figured out how to bookmark the page where I stop, so I can go back to it. I don't think I'll be giving up my print books any time soon, but it is fun to have.  It came in handy when I was waiting for a friend for breakfast the other day.