A Novel Resolution
Well we’re a little less than a week into 2013, and in some ways, I’m pretty sure I’ve already fallen off the resolution wagon. The day before New Year’s Eve, I was sitting in an airport bar in Cleveland, Ohio, doing what you do in airport bars: taking pictures of myself and writing my resolutions artistically on napkins.
I was alone. What else was I supposed to be doing?
As you can see from the list above, my resolutions are a mix of the practical, ie. more vegetables, buy a bed, to the more abstract, ie. Los Angeles.
So far, the only ones I’ve stuck with are numbers three and ten. My new year has been a bevy of books, and we’re not even a week in yet! I’m choosing to blame the lack of saving money, regular yoga, more vegetables and buying a bed on the fact that I got off the plane back in New York – before it was even 2013, mind you – and felt the oncoming storm of a plane and small child-induced head cold. I’ve been knocked out with congestion and sinus pressure for five days and am only just starting to feel fully human again now.
The sickness has been great for my reading schedule though. I’ve been ensconced with various holiday presents under piles of comforters since the ball dropped. I haven’t had the chance to finish one yet, but given the fact that the package of the rest of my Christmas presents – five more books – arrived yesterday means I’m going to have to get on it and finish a few.
This is the resolution I’m going to keep this year: more books. No matter what I’m doing, I’m going to always have a book on me. A real paper and ink book. I’m choosing to not even count the ebooks I carry around with me on my digital reader. I’m choosing not to count the audio books that are taking up space on my cell phone. They’re all well and good. I felt like I spent a lot of time in 2012 with my face buried in a screen, ignoring the world around me. I’d rather spend that time with my face buried in pages, inhaling the sweet perfume of age and words.
I resolve to read all the books put out by Europa Editions that I’ve been stockpiling for the last year. (No seriously, I have about 10 that are stacked on my bureau, threatening me with imminent midnight suffocation through toppling if I don’t get on it.)
I resolve to make my way all the way through 1Q84 rather than meandering through it with the pace of the proverbial turtle off to catch the hare.
I resolve to finish The Casual Vacancy even though it tends to make me want to give up my pursuit of a writing career and just volunteer all my time with education programs because it’s so terribly sad.
I resolve to read all the books I got for Christmas, this year and last. Some are from well-meaning parents who sometimes collect books all year and give me a stack. Some are from friends who are so nervous about picking out books for me that they ask repeatedly whether I like it or not when I’m only tens of pages into the story. I don’t know what about me makes them nervous.
I resolve to get my act together and put together a list of books to review. We’ll see what ends up on it.
What are you resolving to read this year? Are books even a part of your resolution process?
And finally, last but not least and completely unrelated to my reading resolutions, I resolve to keep taking pictures of my food at an obnoxious angle and posting them all over the internet. And my drinks. Because I live in Brooklyn, and that is apparently all any of us do.
Image is my own.
