a tentative map

As I am inclined to do at the end of one year and beginning of another, I’ve been thinking.  Thinking about where I have been as a person, where my family has been, the path that 2010 has taken us on.  It was a roller coaster of a year, but so, so much good came of it.  I can forgive the hard times because we made it.  I’ve been thinking about 2011 and where I want to go this year, what adventures I wish to have.  Reading has always been a part of my life, and this coming year will be no different.  I read ~57 books last year (more if you count the chapter books I read with my kids), and that’s a lot.  This year, though, I would like to read more.  Perhaps 70.  I didn’t quite finish the 10 books that I wouldn’t normally have read challenge, but I did read a few new ones.  I hope that this year will be the same.  I hope to read a few more graphic novels.  I love them so much, but I never seem to make time for them.  Probably because I hate to buy them, but the library doesn’t stock very many.  (I wish I could buy them for the iPad – it seems like the perfect compromise.)  Here’s my current TBR list, a time-to-read wish list of sorts, a tentative map for this year’s reading adventure, in no particular order but culled from various places where I save recommendations.

Care to join me?

1.  The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

2.  A Town Like Alice

3.  The Lace Reader

4.  The Devil in the White City

5.  Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

6.  The Ask

7.  Faithful Place

8.  The Strain

9.  Crossing

10.  Sea

11.  City of Fallen Angels

12.  Crescendo

13.  In a Perfect World

14.  The Walking Dead, Vol 2 & 3  (and more)

15. Paranormalcy

16. The Glass Castle

17.  Blindness

18.  Nothing Left to Burn

19.  How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

20.  The Sparrow

21.  The Mockingbirds

22.  The Unidentified

23.  The Scorch Trials

24.  Before I Fall

25.  Perfume:  The Story of a Murderer

26.  Ship Breaker

27.  Freedom

28.  Kitchen Confidential

29.  Tinkers

30.  Moon Over Manifest

31.   Will Grayson, Will Grayson

32.  Beautiful Darkness

33.  Boneshaker

34.  Innocent

35.  Blind Descent

36.  The Devil and Sherlock Holmes

37.  Beowulf on the Beach

38.  A Visit from the Goon Squad

39.  Mr. Toppit

40.  The Adoration of Jenna Fox

41.  American Gods

42.  We Need to Talk About Kevin

43.  Don’t Look Now

44.  The Good Thief

45.  Leviathan

46.  The Unit

47.  Fun Home

48.  Fables

49.  Phonogram

50.  The Unwritten

51.  Peter & Max

52.  Woman on the Edge of Time

53.  Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

54.  The Count of Monte Cristo

55.  Across the Universe

56.  Please Ignore Vera Dietz… which I’m currently reading

57.  Unearthly… which I have an ARC of and need to move to the top of the list

It’s an odd list, yes?  I may not read them all, but it’s a start.  Some of these have been hanging around the list for a while.  And there are so many new ones to come.  It’s like a dream, writing these lists.  A way to jump into something new.

Already chalked up to 2011:  Super Sad True Love Story and The Scent of Rain and Lightning.

Plus a few late 2010 books that merit note:  Anna and the French Kiss (delightful book, a lovely skip down my own study abroad memory lane), Skippy Dies (one of my 2010 faves – so very good, honest, unflinching), and Delirium (this one was an ARC, and I have more than a snippet to say about it, more to come).