New Years Resolves

No hard and fast "rules" or things I "mustn't" do this year,  just an attempt to do two things a little more regularly.

I took the time to add up my books read during the past year and can't decide if I should think that my total was great, okay or dreadful.  As best as I can remember they were:

• Antigone (Sophocles) StFran
• Bottchan (Saseki) StFran
• Brideshead Revisited (Waugh) StFran
• Bridge over the River (Boulle) Kwai ZRG
• Crossing to Safety (Stegner) My Choice
• Don Quixote (Cervantes) StFran
• Gilead (Robinson) My Choice
• The Help (Stockett) My Choice
• Home (Robinson) My Choice
• Midaq Alley (Mahfouz) St Fran
• The Moviegoer (Percy) StFran
• The Penderwick's  (Birdsall) ZRG
• Portrait of Dorian Gray (Wilde) My Choice
• Prince and the Pauper (Twain) ZRG
• Richard III  (Shakespeare) StFran
• River Poems (Various Poets) ZRG
• Watch on the Rhine  (Hellman) ZRG
• Where the Music Was (East) My Choice
• Witch at Blackbird Pond (Speare) ZRG
• Year of Wonders (Brooks) My Choice

The stats are a little sad:  I read 20 books.... not bad, but not stunning considering that one was a grouping of poetry and two were children's books (the Zachary group is doing children's this year so I have an excuse!)  I'll pat myself on the back though over Don Quixote which was over 1,000 pages and yet I'll sheepishly admit that I listened to portions of it on audio while I was driving.  

The telling part of this is that I only read seven books of my own choosing... and most of those in the last two months of the year.  

So Resolve #1 is to read, read, Read, READ and READ..... So many books, so little time, as the saying goes!

For Resolve #2,  I'll be having friends over for meals more often than I did last year.  The first half of 2010, I used the excuse of having sheetrock dust and wallpaper debris everywhere while we used every available minute of free time getting the house prepped to go on the market.  Then I just sort of coasted along from May through December seeing friends at restaurants and hosting only an occasional  dinners here at the house. 

I probably should have taken on losing weight, giving up sugar, walking, learning yoga, drinking more water or taking daily vitamins but steeling myself up for a grueling year of reading, cooking and visiting sounded like not only a more attainable goal but a lot more fun.