Reading has always been a huge part of my life, and I'm sad to say that I haven't done much of it in the past year or two. Working so much last year especially, I would climb into bed and read for about 15 minutes and fall asleep, and usually that was about all the time each day I could devote to books.
This year, I'm determined to make reading a higher priority in my life! I'm actually getting up earlier in the morning, just so I can have some dedicated reading time. I sit in my Ikea chair and drink my coffee and read, and that gets my day off to a fine start.
Over in my sidebar there's a little ticker that says "2012 Reading Challenge." I snagged that from Goodreads (where technically I'm a member, but I don't bother writing reviews or anything like that--I just use the site to keep track of books I've read and want to read). The reading challenge lets you decide how many books you want to read this year. I set my goal at 30, which is very modest compared to how many I've been known to read in the past. But considering I think I only read about a dozen books in 2011, 30 would definitely be a huge improvement. Mostly I just like having the ticker there to remind me that reading is important to me.
The first book I've finished so far this year is American Rust by Philipp Meyer. I loved this book so much. A bleak but beautiful story about the people of a small Pennsylvania town that has fallen on hard times after the steel mill closed. How do they get away? Do they want to? And if they try to, what are the ramifications of that? And if they don't or can't, whose fault is that? An act of violence near the beginning of the book sets the stage to examine all of these questions and more.
