bame

It isn’t hard to read a book each week if you pick books you really like. The hard part comes if you’ve picked something not to your taste and persist in reading it. I’m going to stop doing that from now on—as it says on some tee-shirts, too many books, not enough time. Why waste what reading time you have on something you can’t stand? If a book is a good read, you’ll have no problem skipping a TV show or even some chores to devote your time to reading it.

I finished the year having read a total of 58 books; of those, 42 were fiction (17 of those mysteries) and 16 non-fiction. I probably would have read more if I hadn’t been stubborn about persisting to read books I simply didn’t like. When I was reading those kind of books (and there were a lot of them this year), I found I would do absolutely anything rather than read (e.g., I’d chose cleaning the bathrooms over reading, and a book has to be REALLY bad for me to make that choice as I HATE cleaning the bathrooms). So I finally adopted the position that if a book doesn’t grab me in the first hundred pages, it’s out. I’m going to stick with that position for next year’s books, despite a lifetime of believing that if I’ve started to read a book, I should finish it. No more!

As a side note, as I spend about an hour each day in my car commuting to work, and I’ve always listened to recorded books in my car, I kept track of those as well. I ‘read’ by listening to 42 additional books, 28 fiction, 14 non-fiction.

I’m not sure if what I painted is large enough to really be considered a mural. It’s a faux window on my basement wall, which looks out onto a Tuscan-like scene. It came about because I rearranged my laundry area which left me with a kind of narrow blank space on a concrete wall. I’ve learned from sorry experience that self-stick hangers don’t work well on concrete in a basement; I think the temperature changes make them lose adhesion. So I dragged out a Donna Dewberry mural book I’d had for ages and adapted one of her designs to window size. Truthfully, her design looks professional, because she is, and mine looks rather dorky, but I like it. I hope to post sometime soon.

One small step toward my goal of learning to paint.