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
- Alcott, Louisa May: Jo’s Boys
- Alcott, Louisa May: Little Men
- Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
- Anonymous: One Thousand and One Nights
- Apuleius, Lucius: The Golden Ass
- Cavendish, Margaret: The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World
- Hamilton, Edith: Mythology
- Hamilton, Edith: The Greek Way
- Lofting, Hugh: Doctor Doolittle (Series)
- Sidney, Margaret: The Complete Five Little Peppers (Series, my copy is an omnibus of all the novels)
Well-Educated Mind Reading List – Novels
- Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote (1605)
- John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress (1679)
- Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
- Jane Austen – Pride & Prejudice (1815)
- Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist (1838)
- Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre (1847)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter (1850)
- Herman Melville – Moby-Dick (1851)
- Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851)
- Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary (1857)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky- Crime and Punishment (1866)
- Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina (1877)
- Thomas Hardy – The Return of the Native (1878)
- Henry James – The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
- Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
- Stephen Crane – The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
- Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness (1902)
- Edith Wharton – The House of Mirth (1905)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (1925)
- Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
- Franz Kafka – The Trial (1925)
- Richard Wright – Native Son (1940)
- Albert Camus – The Stranger (1942)
- George Orwell – 1984 (1949)
- Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man (1952)
- Saul Bellow – Seize the Day (1956)
- Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
- Italo Calvino – If on a winter’s night a traveler (1972)
- Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon (1977)
- Don DeLillo – White Noise (1985)
- A. S. Byatt – Possession (1990)
- Cormac McCarthy – The Road (2006) [link]
2019 Reading Challenges
- Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
- The Viking’s Kurdish Love: A True Story of Zoroastrians’ Fight for Survival, Part I: 988-1003 by Widad Akreyi
- White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
- Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher
- The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
- The Diamond: A Novel by Julie Baumgold
- What Child is This?: An Ellie Kent Mystery by Alice K. Boatwright
- The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
- The Broken Earth by N. K. Jemisin
- Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich
- The Martian by Andy Weir [link]
Vulture Top 100 of the 21st Century So Far List
- The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt
- The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
- Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro [link]
How To Read a Book List
- Homer (9th Century B.C.?) – Iliad & Odyssey
- The Old Testament
- Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.) – Tragedies
- Sophocles (c.495-406 B.C.) – Tragedies
- Herodotus (c.484-425 B.C.) – History
- Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.) – Tragedies (esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
- Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.) – History of the Peloponnesian War
- Gilgamesh
- Egyptian Book of the Dead [link]
A Lifetime’s Reading—Ward
- Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) – Complete Works
- Plato (c. 429-347 BC) – Apology, Crito, Phaedo
- Vaclav Havel (b. 1936) – The Garden Party, The Memorandum
- Tacitus (c. 55-c. 120 AD) – Annals, Histories
- Ondra Lysohorsky (b. 1905) – Selected Poems
- Ernst Hans Gombrich (b. 1909) – The Story of Art
- Poem Into Poem: World Poetry in Modern Verse Translation
- Pierre Abélard (1079-1143) and Héloïse (1101-1164) – Letters, Historia Calamitatum of Abélard [link]
Misc & Bonus
- The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
- The Price of Salt – Patricia Highsmith
- Quantum: A Thriller – Patricia Cornwall
- The Tiger’s Daughter – K. Arsehault Riveria
- The Vine Witch – Luanne G. Smith
- Personal Choice (24) [104 books in total]
Other Reading Projects
- The Harvard Classics in 15 minutes
- Ray Bradbury Trio – 1 Essay, Poem, & Short story daily
- Finish Reading My Currently Reading in GoodReads (45 books, some of which include books already listed [13 books already mentioned] )
- Read more books out of my comfort zone
- Read more books that make me think
- Read more happily ever afters
2020 Blog Plans & Goals
- 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.
- 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.
