2015 In Review

You guys, 2015 was a fabulous year for me. It was a routine kind of year, and I mean that in the best possible way. There were no major life changes. No births or pregnancies, no moves or job changes, nothing life-altering. Thank heavens! We definitely still had some mini adventures and fabulous trips (see above), but by and large, it was a year of figuring out and living my routines. As a creature of habit, I loved that.

Rather than do a blow-by-blow account of how I did on my resolutions for 2015 (as a side note, I'm about 50/50, in that 5 of my goals were obvious successes, and the other 5 were less clearly so), I figured I would just highlight some of my personal successes and lessons learned in 2015.

Top 10 Books of 2015

I've mentioned before how much I love the stats feature of Goodreads. I love being able to track the books I read year by year and see them all laid out in neat little graphs. It's just thrills me to see, and tickles some slight competitive bone in me that makes me want to read more and more just to see the numbers stack up.

This year, I read 48 books. My goal at the beginning of the year was to read 25 books for pleasure. Some of those 48 were books assigned for school, but the vast majority were for pleasure, which means I blew my goal out of the water. (I like setting the bar low, it always makes me feel so good when I super exceed.) 48 still feels like kind of low number to me (after all, it's less than a book a week), but since I am a full time grad student as well as a mother of two, I try to cut myself some slack.

All in all, the reading was pretty good this year. As per tradition. I've gone through and selected my top 10 favorite reads from 2015. It's kind of a fun exercise to do this, because it always reveals to me how arbitrary the five-star rating system is for me. I find that by the end of the year I've often changed my mind on some of the ratings I gave immediately after reading a book, or find that another book I didn't rate very highly has actually stayed with me in a surprisingly powerful way. Anyway, in order of when I read them (not order of value), here are my top 10 from 2015:

Back to Real Life

So, if you've noticed my recent absence around here (and all of the internet, for that matter), I have a perfectly good excuse. I was out of the country.

Um, yes, that would be the incredible Machu Picchu behind us there.

We spent our Christmas vacation on a once in a lifetime trip to Peru and Bolivia with my husband's family. It was an incredible experience, but also a little bit draining. I meant to have some end-of-year posts written up before I left, but what with finishing up school, packing up Christmas to spend it with the grandparents in Utah, then leaving the boys with said grandparents while we hopped on our international flight Christmas night, I just never found the time to get on top of things like that.

And after 10 days, 8 cities, 3 countries (if a layover in Panama counts), 5 time zones, a bout of traveler's diarrhea, and way too many nights trying to grab sleep in uncomfortable plane and bus seats, I'm still not quite on top of things. We made it home late last night, and were greeted by a deconstructed kitchen (we were fumigated for cockroaches while we were gone), no food to speak of, and all our Christmas decorations still patiently waiting to be put away. Needless to say, I will probably still be taking things easy for a while as I focus on getting our lives back in order and back to routine.

But I still plan to inundate you with all my end-of-year recaps and new year goals, no matter how far into January it takes. And maybe a few pictures from our trip, if you're interested. Just be patient with me.

Right now, I'm still marveling at the novelty of brushing my teeth with tap water instead of bottled water. America is amazing, y'all.

It's About the Baby

Occasionally, I like to write personal essays. In honor of my son's birthday today, I thought I would share this one with you that I wrote a couple of years ago, but pulled out and updated this year. I hope you enjoy, and all have a very Merry Christmas!

I about fell off the examination table when the ultrasound technician told me my due date was December 25^th.  “Are you sure?” I asked, hoping there was some kind of mistake, or at least some cruel joke. While this pregnancy was “planned”, we certainly had not intended to have a holiday baby. My cycles had not been very regular after going off birth control, which is why we needed an ultrasound to date the pregnancy in the first place. So I was more than a little bit shocked when she reassured me that yes, this baby was measuring on course for a Christmas delivery.

The Book Blab: Pretty Books for Pretty Gifts (Episode 2 Show Notes)

If you haven't already had a chance to watch, Amy and I recorded our second episode of The Book Blab this past Wednesday, and we had a ton of fun with this episode. We discussed "pretty books," those gorgeous editions of classic books that make the perfect quality gifts for the book lovers in your life (they are all on my to-buy list for myself). Honestly, there were SO MANY other editions and collections and books we could've talked about, but we kept the show to 30 minutes for your sake (you're welcome). Let me know in the comments what your favorite "pretty books" are, I'd love to know what else I should have my eye on. Show notes are posted after the break, with links to everything we talk about. (Also, we experienced some technical difficulties in this episode, so please forgive, but it's all part of doing a live show.)

Show Notes

0:20 - Christmas preparations

1:50 - Book buying philosophy

• 2:10 - Suzanne's
• 3:53 - Amy's

5:35 - Beautiful editions

• 5:53 - Suzanne's favorites
• 8:09 - Amy's favorites

11:32 - The problem of not being able to get the entire series in some editions

15:37 - Collected works (pros and cons) 

17:42 - Thoughts on the newly illustrated Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone 

21:15 - (Some of) the books we're buying for Christmas

24:56 - Two favorite books that were published in 2015

• 25:50 - Suzanne's pick
• 27:08 - Amy's pick 

30:34 - Conclusion

Links from the show:

The Count of Monte Cristo -  Penguin classics hardcover clothbound edition

Emily of New Moon - Sourcebook edition with cover illustration by Jacqui Oakley

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Puffin in Bloom edition

A Merry Christmas and Other Christmas Stories - Penguin Christmas Classics edition

Little Men - Hesperus Press edition

Anne of Green Gables - Puffin in Bloom edition

Anne of Green Gables - Aladdin classics edition

Jane Austen collected works - Barnes & Noble Collectible edition

The Chronicles of Narnia collection - Barnes & Noble Collectible edition

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Arthur A. Levine Books edition, illustrated by Jim Kay 

The Chronicles of Narnia - full color collector's edition by HarperTrophy 

Suzanne's review of Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee  

Amy's review of The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall

My Christmas Novel To-Read List

A couple years ago I posted about my top 10 favorite Christmas books. I was reviewing that list earlier when I sent my Christmas lists off to various family members (I'm finally getting serious about expanding our Christmas book collection, and using grandparent gifts to do it), and realized that all the books were children's books and picture books (technically The Gift of the Magi is a short story, but that's beside the point).

So this year I thought, why not do a post talking about all the best Christmas novels? After all, I'm really trying to get into the idea of seasonal reading for myself, not just the kids. So, I sat down to write out a list of good Christmas novels, and here's what I came up with:

Books I Read in November

Well, I hope you all had as lovely a Thanksgiving as I did. It was a bit low-key. For the first time in my married life we didn't travel and we didn't host guests. This meant that for the first time in my life I was solely responsible for the outcome of the turkey, and that was a little intimidating, but all turned out well in the end. We teamed up with our good friends that live in the same apartment complex as us (kind of dreamy, living practically next door to such good friends), and between the two of us we cooked up a storm, enjoyed a fantastic feast, and played games late into the night while eating seconds (and thirds?) of pie. It was pretty perfect.

Also, we had leftovers for days, which is just the way I like it. I finished off the last of the turkey for lunch today, and I'm already scratching my head about what we're going to eat for dinner tonight. I've nearly forgotten what a dinner looks like that doesn't involve turkey leftovers.

In other news, despite being thoroughly consumed by those pesky term papers I'm still in the middle of, I managed to read some books in November. Also most of them were excellent reads. Yay!