Read-olutions

I try not to make New Year's Resolutions, although the temptation to make pointless lists almost always gets the better of me sooner or later. There is one exception -a list I look forward to making and that proves useful. Who could ask for more? I keep a running -very long- list of books I want to read someday. One could see such a list as disheartening, but to me it's exciting. Looking at the list is like looking at a room full of all the candy in the world and thinking "I can have any of this that I want?". In fact, I can have all of it! Well, I can have all of it if I quit my job, check out of all my volunteer and fun activities and just read for the rest of my life. But I can take a crack at the list, in any case.

So, every year at about this time I make a list of 12 books from the list as it currently exists. Books that are published this year or that I discover this year are sometimes read right away, or they're added to the list. And then there's at least one book a month that really has nothing to recommend it, but I read it anyway. One of the best pieces of advice I ever read was in Genreflecting by Betty Rosenberg. No one needs to apologize for his or her tastes in reading, she claims. If I need to read a mystery or something about Bridget Jones once in a while, so be it.

So, here's this year's list of readolutions:

• Freedom in Meditation by Patrica Carrington
• The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything by K.C. Cole
• The Last 100 Days by John Toland
• A Weekend in September by John Edward Weems
• Mount Misery by Samuel Shem
• The Age of Sacred Terror by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon
• Plan B by Annie LaMott
• The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley
• How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle by Frances Willard
• The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry
• Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and their Journey through Schizophrenia by Pamela Spiro Wagner
• Landscape for a Good Woman by Carolyn Steedman

There now. That's 12 books from the ever-expanding list. That's a nice sensible number, under the circumstances. What's on your list?

Tags: social work