Month: January 2014

Resolution Update #1

So I only posted my resolutions yesterday, but I’m ready to update my Bingo card.  Here goes – I’m treating it like a dance card, I need to fill all boxes. GO!

  1. A Book with More than 500 Pages
  2. A Forgotten Classic
  3. A Book that Became a Movie
  4. A Book Published This Year
  5. A Book with a Number in the Title
  6. A Book Written By Someone Under 30
  7. A Book with Non-Human Characters
  8. A Funny Book
  9. A Book by a Female Author (really, this is a category??) Continue reading →
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New Year’s Resolutions 2014

So I was really sick off and on at the turn of the year.  I was also gearing up to take on a HUGE project with the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) Docent Corps, which is just now getting under way.  So finally! Here’s my New Year’s Resolutions.

  1. Run a half-marathon in September.  I’ve even talked my baby brother into doing this with me.  So now to register for a 5K in early April, say a 10K in June…. This will also help with a secondary goal of catching up with my s-i-l’s miles on fitbit.  As of today, she has 644 miles, and I 303 have miles.  I plan to match her by the end of June. It will be a challenge as we both continue to accrue miles and steps, and she started 2.5 months before me (her August 18 to my November 8), but if I continue to try to walk 12,500 steps per average daily, there’s hope.
  2. Read more broadly. Continue reading →

Backlist Book Suggestions

Several friends and acquaintances have been looking for book suggestions, so I thought I’d do a post when I realized my book suggestions were getting obnoxiously long for anyone’s wall.   BUT because I read a lot of backlist works, that means LIBRARY and FREE, as well as some instant gratification that the”hot now”  hold lists don’t give you.  I also read much more broadly than the list below suggests, especially in the murder or thriller mysteries, so I need to think about how I’d categorize those a bit more for a separate post. I have also started to read more non-fiction, but that tends to be focused on Chicago, so that can also be another post for another day.

 So here’s some author suggestions by category:

  • Literary fiction: Barbara Kingsolver, Chris Bohjalian, Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, Abraham Verghese, Khaled Hosseini, Pearl Buck, John Irving, Willa Cather, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott
  • Fiction: Emily Giffin, Alisa Valdes, Maeve Binchy, Audrey Niffenegger, Gillian Flynn, Jamie Ford, Continue reading →