• reading in 2015 •

reading2015_collageA House of Pomegranates, Oscar WildeThe Strange Library, Haruki MurakamiTales of Space and Time, H.G. WellsFlower Fables, Louisa May AlcottThe Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman The Infinities, John BanvilleA Cidade e as Serras, Eça de QueirósO Banquete, Patrícia PortelaThe Apothecary’s House, Adrian MathewsHúmus, Raúl BrandãoMemoirs of a Geisha, Artur GoldenBetween the Acts, Virginia WoolfDream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for beginners, Sigmund FreudA Room of One’s Own, Virginia WoolfThe Sense of an Ending, Julian BarnesThe Voyage Out, Virginia WoolfThe Complete Uncollected Stories, J.D. SalingerThe Big Leap, Gay HendricksHow a Child Thinks: a Piaget Primer, Dorothy G. SingerO Mar, A Mãe, Marie DarrieussecqThe Moonstone, Wilkie CollinsDubliners, James JoyceThe Art of Asking, Amanda PalmerUnder the Sunset, Bram StokerThe Invisible Giant, Bram StokerNobody’s Story, Bram StokerA Dream of Red Hands, Bram StokerThe Dualitists, Bram StokerMoon-Face and Other Stories, Jack London

29 books out of a goal of 35. Not too bad, although I have to admit the Bram Stoker entries at the end of the year were one short story each, found and read in a shameful desperation to reach my goal. Despite these efforts, I came to December very behind but hopefully I can make up for it this year, as I set the bar at the 35-book mark. Again. Thumbs up for resilience! Or stubbornness. Or… both?

Some of the books read before mommahood seem to have been read a lifetime ago and, in a way, it probably is true. While looking at the titles lined up in this yearly round-up, the ones that stand out as favourites are Patrícia Portela’s O Banquete, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins was probably the longest book in terms of page count of the bunch but it read like a breeze, I couldn’t put it down, and Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking – it was a true eye-opener and gave so many lessons into trust and humility and passion, very important backbones to an artist and, quite frankly, to any human being.

Most of them have also been read in the ebook format which would come as a surprise for the reading-me of a few years ago. I don’t actually prefer it to the feel of holding a book in my hands but it came quite handy during nighttime feeds and insomnias when turning on the light wasn’t a possibility. So, yeah, that was a plus. But this year I’d like to read a few more books in the conventional format rather than a digital one.

Besides the ongoing reads that crossed over to the new year path, I have decided to begin 2016 with a collection of poems and other work by W.B. Yeats. This book was given by my sister on my 30th birthday last year – and yes, the joke in the title did not go by unnoticed – and it’s part of the Penguin’s Drop Caps series where each letter is assigned to a classic literary work. What tends to happen every time I pick it up is that I get mesmerised by its beautiful vintage cover design and don’t go beyond that.

I mean, just look. at. it.
Gorgeous!

So, in 2016, I am hoping to read this too from first to last page, at least one poem or short essay or story a day. It just seems a nice way to read something daily, whenever I can’t find the time to pursue any of my other current readings. And let’s hope this year I don’t get myself back into shamefully stacking ridiculous single short stories to reach a goal. It’s a good aim and the rest is all part of the attempt.

s h a r eEmail to someoneShare on FacebookGoogle+Tweet about this on Twitter

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
http://journal.yinjoy.net/2016/01/%E2%80%A2-reading-in-2015-%E2%80%A2/
journal.yinjoy.net
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-13
32569
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:AZUXT2CH6F7M4AVM2XT34BM7UAWH5MPQ
<urn:uuid:03dcd133-8d53-4e36-826e-5a7dd93ff70f>
2019-03-24T23:53:54Z
81.88.48.97
text/html
sha1:TKDYCD4CWQOJDKIP3ERDUWEYZOG47KHY
<urn:uuid:66b25755-7981-4e25-9634-f7715ac66fbc>
http://journal.yinjoy.net/2016/01/%E2%80%A2-reading-in-2015-%E2%80%A2/
response
<urn:uuid:6a983473-c473-4555-8024-75ba4eba6dea>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-13
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for March 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-143-92-167.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/