2019 In Review

Looking back, whoof. Lots of ideas, but Real Life has a way of kicking in. I have managed to reach (or nearly, I have two books left to read for my 2019 G.R. Challenge) at least one goal this year: 52 books in a year. But in my defense, my daughter graduated H.S. in May and started college in August. She is a commuter and does not drive yet, so I’m the driver. I’ve been averaging 100 miles six days a week, as she also has a job on the weekends at school as part of her work-study. But the new semester is coming up, so adjustments ahoy!

Blog wise, I’ve had some awesome numbers, and hopefully, next year will be even better, especially with more consistent blogging. I had to swap hosting earlier this month, which was a minor headache as I needed to iron out a few oddities, but my backups (including the databases) saved the day and made it easier for me and Dreamhost.

As for my reading challenges? I bought some books for them, and found a bunch at the library, but I have not finished any book that was on the reading challenge list. Oops. I’m going to give them another go this year, and possibly eyeball the 2020 Popsugar, Book Riot & Reading Women reading challenges this year. And be a lot more strict with my reading.

Reading List

Classics Club Reading List

1. Alcott, Louisa May: Jo’s Boys
2. Alcott, Louisa May: Little Men
3. Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
4. Anonymous: One Thousand and One Nights
5. Apuleius, Lucius: The Golden Ass
6. Cavendish, Margaret: The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World
7. Hamilton, Edith: Mythology 
8. Hamilton, Edith: The Greek Way
9. Lofting, Hugh: Doctor Doolittle (Series)
10. Sidney, Margaret: The Complete Five Little Peppers (Series, my copy is an omnibus of all the novels)

Well-Educated Mind Reading List – Novels

1. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote (1605)
2. John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress (1679)
3. Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
4. Jane Austen – Pride & Prejudice (1815)
5. Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist (1838)
6. Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre (1847)
7. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter (1850)
8. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (1851)
9. Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851)
10. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary (1857)
11. Fyodor Dostoevsky- Crime and Punishment (1866)
12. Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina (1877)
13. Thomas Hardy – The Return of the Native (1878)
14. Henry James – The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
15. Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
16. Stephen Crane – The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
17. Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness (1902)
18. Edith Wharton – The House of Mirth (1905)
19. F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (1925)
20. Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
21. Franz Kafka – The Trial (1925)
22. Richard Wright – Native Son (1940)
23. Albert Camus – The Stranger (1942)
24. George Orwell – 1984 (1949)
25. Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man (1952)
26. Saul Bellow – Seize the Day (1956)
27. Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
28. Italo Calvino – If on a winter’s night a traveler (1972)
29. Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon (1977)
30. Don DeLillo – White Noise (1985)
31. A. S. Byatt – Possession (1990)
32. Cormac McCarthy – The Road (2006) [link]

2019 Reading Challenges

1. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
2. The Viking’s Kurdish Love: A True Story of Zoroastrians’ Fight for Survival, Part I: 988-1003 by Widad Akreyi
3. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
4. Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher
5. The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
6. The Diamond: A Novel by Julie Baumgold
7. What Child is This?: An Ellie Kent Mystery by Alice K. Boatwright
8. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
9. The Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
10. The Broken Earth by N. K. Jemisin
11. Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich
12. The Martian by Andy Weir [link]

Vulture Top 100 of the 21st Century So Far List

1. The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt
2. The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
3. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro [link]

How To Read a Book List

1. Homer (9th Century B.C.?) – Iliad & Odyssey
2. The Old Testament 
3. Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.) – Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c.495-406 B.C.) – Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c.484-425 B.C.) – History
6. Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.) – Tragedies (esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
7. Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.) – History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Gilgamesh 
9. Egyptian Book of the Dead [link]

A Lifetime’s Reading—Ward

1. Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) – Complete Works
2. Plato (c. 429-347 BC) – Apology, Crito, Phaedo
3. Vaclav Havel (b. 1936) – The Garden Party, The Memorandum
4. Tacitus (c. 55-c. 120 AD) – Annals, Histories
5. Ondra Lysohorsky (b. 1905) – Selected Poems
6. Ernst Hans Gombrich (b. 1909) – The Story of Art
7. Poem Into Poem: World Poetry in Modern Verse Translation
8. Pierre Abélard (1079-1143) and Héloïse (1101-1164) – Letters, Historia Calamitatum of Abélard [link]

Misc & Bonus

1. The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
2. The Price of Salt – Patricia Highsmith
3. Quantum: A Thriller – Patricia Cornwall
4. The Tiger’s Daughter –  K. Arsehault Riveria
5. The Vine Witch –  Luanne G. Smith
6. Personal Choice (24) [104 books in total]

Other Reading Projects

1. The Harvard Classics in 15 minutes
2. Ray Bradbury Trio – 1 Essay, Poem, & Short story daily
3. Finish Reading My Currently Reading in GoodReads (45 books, some of which include books already listed [13 books already mentioned] )
4. Read more books out of my comfort zone
5. Read more books that make me think
6. Read more happily ever afters

2020 Blog Plans & Goals

1. More regular posts, aiming to post at least once a week, in the beginning, upping to three times a week by this time next year. I have a handful of post drafts right now, working on more, which also includes discussing what I’ve read in my reading lists.
2. More photographs, aiming for a daily post. I have a new DSLR now, and it’s part of my project for 2020 to learn how to use it.