Hello!  Happy New Year, again.  I feel like I've been away for a while.  Between Christmas festivities and having my dear friend Kristina visiting [post forthcoming],  I've only had time for the brief word / picture, but nothing very substantial.  Hoping that changes now that things return to their quieter routine :)

I wanted to share the results from books read last year.  After a personal best at 53 books in 2011, I thought I'd challenge myself with 60 for 2012 - ha!  Well, 2011 was very much an "on" year for reading.  My schedule was rather conducive to it, I took some great courses, breezed through 2 fantasy/sci-fi series (The Auralia Thread and The Hunger Games), was introduced to what good contemporary fiction looks like (thank you History of Love), and came across a host of other good books... mostly shorter books. 

2012 turned out entirely different.  I began the year with Clarissa.  That alone should count for something.  But I also spent time with modernist poetry.  Reading and attempting to understand the Wasteland doesn't feel like reading a whole book - but it sure takes effort, more effort for me in a lot of ways. 
But then I graduated.  And it wasn't like "Whew! I've graduated, I want a break from the books" - far from it.  Rather it was, "I've finally graduated and can get around to all of the coffee dates I've been putting off."  Throw graduation parties, catching up on sleep, and job applications on top of that and it didn't exactly translate into reading as much as I'd like.  But then in July I re-entered Middle Earth... now I'm just 30 pages from sailing away from it  [too cheesy? meh].  Could I have read the "Concerning Hobbits Tetralogy" faster?  Sure... but spending the last 6 months roaming from the Misty Mountains to Mordor has washed me.  It's clarified the way I see life.  It's made me laugh and cry countless times.  It's provided a great connection with my boss :)  It's made me feel the total nerd that I am--complete with hobbit ears. 
It's made me realize that I am a hobbit and that this life is an unexpected adventure.  As of 3 weeks ago I had finished "Mount Doom" and, yes, I've been busy, but part of me wasn't ready for it to end.  I know that tears await me at the Grey Havens.

But I feel ready now to bid the Shire goodbye, and tonight I will.  Though statistically it means I've read only 8 novels since graduating (32 total for 2012), it's been a gift.

Now I have the books of 2013 calling my name.  There's a whole stack already by my bed that I can't wait to dig into.  It's a "farewell" to Tolkien, but it's a "hello" to Green, Kraus, Niffenneger, and countless others.

2013 - I can't wait to crack your cover!

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Updated so you can see the full list:

1	The Rainbow
2	Othello
3	Macbeth
4	Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories
5	Clarissa
6	King Lear
7	To the Lighthouse
8	Measure for Measure
9	Waterland
10	The Winter's Tale
11	History of Tom Jones
12	Atonement
13	The Tempest
14	Man Who was Thursday
15	A Severe Mercy
16	Sign of Four
17	Poems of TS Eliot
18	Metamorphosis
19	Trials of Socrates
20	Six Characters in Search of an Author
21	Protagoras
22	Gorgias
23	Mrs. Dalloway
24	Bald Soprano
25	Endgame
26	Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
27	The Archivist
28	Woman in White
29	The Hobbit*
30	JRR Tokien - Biography
31	Fellowship of the Ring*
32	Two Towers*

Key: 
*re-read
___ read for school