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Love the One(s) You're With

2013 is fast approaching, and with it the recollection that resolutions are in order. Who doesn't hope that each new year might bring with it some kind of change, however insignificant? I have a few ideas for new year's resolutions, one of which would go something like "read the books you already own."

Most years I make some resolution regarding books. This past year was 1) to read more and frivolously, and 2) to blog about it. I have a very bad habit of buying more books than I can read, and then going out and getting even more at the library. 2012 has been a year of reading as much as possible, however ridiculous the material - and in the first part of the year I took that very seriously, reading through about thirty young adult novels, among other things, at a remarkable pace, on top of my usual editing load. I flagged off a good deal this fall, and I'm now about ten books behind my goal for the year. But this is not a resolution to get anxious about.

Now I'm looking about me at all of the thicker volumes I've collected that I didn't attend to this year because they would, quite simply, take too long. I think 2013 is the year for them. This means (ideally) finishing Les Miserables (and not just because of the film), War and Peace, and Joseph and His Brothers, as well as the Umberto Eco novel I recently (five months ago) borrowed from some friends, the China Mieville that's been sitting by my bed for too long, and the large stack of non-fiction that has been crying out to me since that ancient age, 2011.

I'll also be leading a few more reading groups in which we'll tackle three or four Madeleine L'Engle titles and C. S. Lewis' space trilogy. I'm looking forward to those, because they're books I love to reread and never, ever tire of. Lastly, I began several series' in 2012 that I will continue reading as the sequels come out. I suspect they will be the only books, at least in the first part of the year, I put on my to-be-read pile that I don't already own.

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