Saturday, January 1, 2011

Happy 2011!

Happy, happy New Year!

Rainy first morning of 2011, pancakes and coffee, leisuring around before heading to New Year's Day class with Trixie in tow -- oh, frabjous, frabjous day!  After which I will hang about with the kula at our beloved Cibo, then return home for New Year's Ritual #1, the shelving of all of 2010's reads.  Could it get more frabjous?

At left, only the partial stack since the tiny shelf these are balanced on couldn't take the additional weight of books eaten after the Lethem.  Their brethren are stacked elsewhere, waiting for this day, on which I can lovingly take in their physical form as I  put them, in their assigned places, by category and/or alphabet.

Above them a gorgeous drawing executed by The Kid, one of his favorites, which makes it all the more special to me that he gifted it to me for my last birthday.  Beautiful.

I did "better" in 2010 than in 2009 or 2008, in terms of the number of books read.  I had wanted to break 30 in 2009, fell short with 29.  This year, wahoo, got all the way to 35, after excluding 5 books I started and didn't finish.  Counting them would be cheating.  In all, a fair number of yoga-related titles, memoir, non-fiction and animals, a little poetry, and some utterly delectable fiction.

And to think that as I write this, more books are making their way to me, courtesy of the used selection available on Amazon.com, to make a bold start for 2011.  YAY!

Here's wishing everyone a beautiful new year, filled with adventure on the page and elsewhere!
XXXXXX


2010 Books!
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Shop Girl, Steve Martin
In a Strange Room, Damon Galgut
Room, Emma Donoghue
Parrot & Olivier in America, Peter Carey
Chronic City, Jonathan Lethem
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
The Children's Book, A.S. Byatt
Shackleton's Stowaway, Victoria McKernan
Tinkers, Paul Harding
Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa, Kevin Richardson
Invisible, Paul Auster
The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
Lit, Mary Karr
Brooklyn, Tolm Coibin
To Have Not, Frances Lefkowitz
Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
Zeitoun, Dave Eggers
The Outlander, Gil Adamson
Little Bee, Chris Cleave
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of the Sundarbans, Sy Montgomery
The Yoga of Discipline, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
Sadhana of the Heart, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
The Weight of Heaven, Thrity Umrigar
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
Away, Amy Bloom
Mary Queen of Scots, Antonia Fraser
The Children of Henry VIII, Alison Weir
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Why I Wake Early, Mary Oliver
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh

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