A Reader’s New Year’s Resolutions
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
– Annie Dillard
by Debby Montague
Weirs Times Book Reviewer
I’m done with the usual resolutions: eat healthy, get more sleep, lose weight, de-stress. They are all good undertakings, but I can barely make it through January on most of them. Like the adage “do what you love” it occurred to me that I would have more success keeping pledges that affected something I love. Reading is as vital to me as eating and breathing so I decided to make some reading resolutions for the new year.
I skipped the easy pledges. “Read something every day” isn’t a resolution; it’s a fact of my life, so no declaration needed on that point. “Look up the definition of unknown words” is another good idea, but if I can’t make out the essence of a word from the context, I automatically look it up. My grandmother drummed that into me when I was six years old. “Use a word three times and it is yours,” she’d say as my cousin and I thumbed through the dictionary. So I’ve omitted the customary vows and determined to do better on reading objectives that don’t yet meet my standards.
- Do a modified Marie Kondo on the shelves. If I no longer feel the love between me and Robert B. Parker or Lillian Jackson Braun, that’s okay. I’m not going to pack up their books and donate them to the library yet. I’m going to leave them on the shelf and let them simmer awhile longer. Many is the time I have sent a book off to the library only to go madly searching for it a year or two down the road. Instead I’ll try to focus on books that I never warmed up to in the first place. Books that I intended to read to improve my mind, please the giver of said book, or check off something on someone else’s “Top Ten of 2019” “Top 100 Mysteries of the 20th Century” or “Top 50 Books to Read Before You Die.” Those books can go directly to the cartons and then on to the library. Someone may enjoy them, and I need space on my shelves.
- Make more frequent use of libraries. I can manage this resolution in a few ways. Get in the car and drive three miles to the library, wander the shelves and see what strikes my fancy, offer my card as my credential and off I go. This is fine when you have the time and weather to go to the library, but what if there is two feet of snow outside the door? What if it’s ten o’clock Sunday night? No problem. Today most libraries offer access to their digital and audio books through Libby https://meet.libbyapp.com/ or a similar a app. Libby doesn’t care about time or weather nor does Amazon Prime Reading. My subscription to Amazon Prime not only gets me free shipping and tons of teasing images just begging me to buy every time I log onto my account, but I also have access to Prime Reading. I may not find the latest best seller on Libby or Prime Reading, or the book I had in mind to read, but I’ll find something to fill a long dark night.
- Read something outside the usual sphere. I usually read mysteries – cozy mysteries, historical mysteries, cop mysteries, detective mysteries, amateur sleuth mysteries – but I’ve decided that I need to broaden my reading horizon every now and then. I haven’t read much fantasy for years and lately I’m sorely lacking in nonfiction reading. Maybe it’s time to tear down that wall I have against Harry Potter or the Hobbit. Or, I might re-read Mary Stewart’s King Arthur and Merlin series which I devoured thirty years ago. For non-fiction I’ve got David McCullough’s The Pioneers on my list along with Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.
- Re-read some old favorites. I might choose William F. Buckley, Jr’s Marco Polo, If You Can, a gift from a very dear friend many years ago. Or I could take Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin off the shelf, a positive and uplifting true story for trying times. And if I decide it’s a hero I need I’ll grab Gwen Cooper’s Homer’s Odyssey, a two-fer because in my opinion both Gwen and Homer are heroes. I could go the full Monty and opt for a series. It would be like binging on “Game of Thrones” or “Lost.” I’d choose James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle WWII Mysteries or Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache books. These would be in addition to a series I’ve determined to reread – for the fourth or fifth time – Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries. Come January I’ll sit down, open the first book, Fer-De-Lance, and walk into Nero Wolfe’s office in the old brownstone on W. 35th Street, New York City. I’ll spin the globe if Wolfe isn’t looking, sit down in the red leather chair, and, when he offers a libation, I’ll tell Archie that I’d love a Side Car or a glass of Montrachet.
Four reading resolutions are enough for 2020, I think. I don’t want to set my sights too high, and if I can master these resolutions I’ll be well-satisfied with the books and myself.
So, dear reader, how about you? Will you go for traditional resolutions as we head into a new year and decade? Or will you visit some old fictional friends and make some new ones?
