Day 3/366 of my Project 366 for 2020. It was super wet today, and it was misting in between rain showers.
Filter/Edits: Silvered filter- PS Express
Camera: NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5600, Nikkor AF=P 18-55mm
Settings: ƒ/5.6 | 1/125 | 52mm | ISO160
The Crape Myrtle outside of my house in the rain and at night. Taken with my Pixel 3a using Night Sight, and edited in Snapseed using Portrait + Accentuate filters.
Google Pixel 3a ƒ/1.8 1/3 4.44mm ISO3076
Essay: “Western Civilization” means Classics…and White Supremacy
Poem: “I Am Offering this Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Short Story: “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf
Harvard Classics in 15 Minutes: School-Day Poems by John Milton. Read: MILTON’S POEMS Vol. 4, pp. 7-18
Simple Abundance: “Loving The Questions”
Today was a bit harder due to real life, but day 2 has been taken care of! Including my Latin.
1/366 of my Project 366 2020 photography project. Think I said project enough? Thought the cedars lining one side of my yard looked really pretty in the setting sun, so I got a picture.
Camera: NIKON D5600 ƒ/5.6 1/125 35mm ISO320 + Vibrant filter, cropping & contrast in Photoshop Express.
Harvard Classics: Franklin’s Advice for the New Year
“Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve”-was one of the rules for success framed by America’s first “self-made” man. Read from FRANKLIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Vol. 1, pp. 79-85
Essay: “The Great Conversation” by Robert Hutchins
Short Story: “From the Diary of Sherlock Holmes” by Maurice Baring
Poem: closet with the letter ‘d’ on either end by Atom Atkinson + New Year’s Day by Kim Addonizio
Simple Abundance: “A Transformative Year of Delight and Discovery” in Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
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.
Reading Slumps, or my Travails Therein
I’ve had a lovely reading slump, as in I have barely opened any books, despite what my Goodreads account says.
Lots of life has happened. My daughter graduated from high school. My insomnia got weird (chronic & under treatment) which meant I didn’t have the energy to read & analyze books, which was my intention with doing reviews. Then I remembered I hated doing book reviews in school and that’s transferred to now. I legit sat down and tried to re-read Widows of Malabar Hill to write a review and I did everything but read the book (which I already read and enjoyed). Executive dysfunction is awesome! Especially if you have a blog you are trying to get going. So, that has also been a Thing.
Getting Behind on the #TBR
Which leads me to the whole getting behind on the list. I have a goal set in Goodreads to read 75 books this year, which I thought was doable since last year I did ~100 books and per Goodreads, I am “behind” by 34 books.
It’s not a race to read books, and I’ll catch up. I read fairly fast (~100 pages an hour) and I have a bunch of great books queued up on my e-reader and my Kindle app.
Other Updates
I recently posted a new book list: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life Changing List. I wanted a pretty, easy to use list of the books listed, so I transcribed the titles and authors of the books mentioned from my own copy of the book. I’m making a binder and an Evernote notebook of various lists I’ve collected just so I can remember my book list when I hit up bookstores.
I have some posts planned for August and September: making a reading plan (which I really should do); some genre primers on my fave book genres; and discussing books that talk about books and reading, one of my book collecting focus areas.
I had Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens as a Debut Novel to read on my Popsugar Reading Challenge List (which I dearly hope I can get to finishing up but that is another post) but reading this Slate article has made me leery of reading it, and I don’t think it’ll be something I’ll enjoy.
EDIT: I’ve found an old New Yorker article (2010) about Delia Owen & her husband, and it’s just adding to my uncomfortable feeling about the author.
So instead of the book, I’ve picked more that would work, one of which was already on my Popsugar list. I’m basing my picks from Electric Lit, Book Riot, and Read It Forward.
Replacement Options
- Sugar Run by Mesha Maren – Queer Southern Noir
- American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson – Cold War Spy Thriller with a black, female intelligence officer
- Bangkok Wakes in the Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad – Stories set in Bangkok. I’m interested in Thailand as my step-mother is an immigrant from there.
- Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes- A cute looking romance between a recently widowed woman and her late husband’s best friend
- Enchante by Gita Trelease – A woman relies on petty magic to survive after she’s orphaned, then must go to Paris after her savings are stolen.
- Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau Preto – a girl runs away to find the Phoenix Riders of old in order to save her country
- The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray – When a family matriarch and her husband are arrested, it’s up to her sisters to figure out what happened.
- Descendant of the Crane by Joan He – A princess who’s tried to avoid her responsibilities is now Queen, after her father’s murder. She is willing to do whatever it takes to find out who killed her father.
- We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal – a girl disguises herself as a man in order to feed her family, until she meets the Prince of Death.
- Nottingham by Nathan Makaryk – I am a sucker for retellings of Robin Hood and this looks to be excellent.
Posts in January
[wrap-up-posts date=”January 2019″]
In Review
So in review, I’ve made a lot of lists for 2019 and started posting in general. Next month I’m going to work on being a bit more consistent and not have clumps of posts.
February plans are doing some reviews of books and trying to post at least once a week. I hope to also start a newsletter, once I’ve nailed down a format and content just for the newsletter.
I’m very proud to admit I am a nerd about books. And tracking, though I am not very consistent. Yet. That’s one of my goals this year is to be more consistent in tracking what I’ve read, so I’m going to share my methods in book tracking as a way to keep me accountable.
My Methods
So along with my Goodreads account, I’m using a notebook and a book tracking spreadsheet. It’s copied from Book Riot’s spreadsheet with the addition of some more granular genres and the challenges I’m doing this year. I’m still fixing up the formulas, as they don’t really fill down correctly in the cells, so I have to do them manually. That’s a lot of formulas and I’ve already gotten cross-eyed once today.
I’m still figuring out exactly what I want to put in my journal, but I’m starting out with some reading lists: my classics list, and a couple of others, so I have the fun of crossing them off when I’ve read them. Or put a nice red mark for DNF.
As more keeping track of the books I have, I use a combo of Calibre, Goodreads, and LibraryThing. Well, my LibraryThing is a mess right now. I did an import, and none of them kept their covers, so I’m having to back and edit. And there’s a lot in there whoops. So right now, Calibre & GoodReads are much easier to use.
I buy my books from Amazon & Google Play Books mostly, with FeedBooks as a secondary source of nicely formatted public domain books.
For my e-reader, I use Moon+Pro after I’ve converted my ebooks to epub. I keep the original version + the epub version and use
The notebook is also new to me this year in my book
The first few pages are for the index, then I started numbering the pages from 1 after the index. It’s been a while since I did much of anything long hand so it’s going to be slow going getting my reading lists in my journal.
Index Page 
Classics List (in Progress)
Additional Readings & Links
- How to Keep a Reading Log Or Book Journal @ ThoughtCo
- Tips & Tricks to Start A Reading Journal @ Page Flutter
