A quick update about my Bout of Books progress:

Day 1: I got a little more than 50 pages of When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds, one of the Cybils YA finalists, read. It’s fine, but hasn’t grabbed me.

Day 2: Not much time for reading. I read Holly Black’s story in My True Love Gave To Me, which was less scary than I’d feared it’d be.

Day 3: I started the title story from Anthony Trollope’s Christmas at Thompson Hall & Other Christmas Stories, in addition to reading Gayle Forman’s story in My True Love Gave To Me, which was as cute as I’d expected it to be.

Overall, slower progress than might have been hoped for, but still perfectly acceptable.

I’m in a bit of a reading lull at the moment as I attempt not to hurry through the short stories of My True Love Gave to Me, so I thought I’d sign up for next week’s Bout of Books 12.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01 a.m. Monday, January 5th, and runs through Sunday, January 11th, in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 12 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

My 2013 reading output (input?) was nearly 1.25 books or more than 300 pages a week. So I’d say my goals for next week are:

1. To read every day;
2. To finish two books OR to read 400 pages; and
3. To blog about books at least twice next week. (The posts do not need to be long, and all topical posts do not have to relate to my current reading.)

I have two finalists from this year’s Cybils Award due back to the library this week, a shiny pile of literary Christmas presents, and a plethora of languishing titles in my To Be Read mountains to choose from. I look forward to seeing what I settle on as my starting read at midnight.

Feel like reading along, too? Goal-setting is optional and non-binding. You can sign up at the link above.

Happy Boxing Day! Did you have a relaxing day after Christmas/Friday? I did. I didn’t leave my parents’ house. I read two stories from one of the new books Rudi gave me for Christmas (My True Love Gave To Me (appropriate, right?!)), hung out with loved ones, did a crossword puzzle, made a batch of cookies, ate leftovers, and watched The Hundred-Foot Journey (which we all enjoyed and heartily recommend). I did not wrap a single present, drive long distances, get up early, or do any shopping. It was lovely.

(If you normally receive my Christmas mix or a Christmas card from me, but haven’t yet, I’m behind, but am working on it. I hope to get caught up this weekend.)

In the meantime, may I offer you some (90 minutes of) ear candy of another sort? Here is Neil Gaiman reading Charles Dickens’ personal script to the readings he did of A Christmas Carol, the action of which ends on Boxing Day:

I’m in a funk and find myself unwilling or unable or unmotivated to pick up the needles and finish the thumb gusset portion of the fingerless mitt you saw a couple weeks ago. It looks not especially different from that shot, except that I tinked back to where I should have started the gusset increases when I was knitting on it last year and have knit that ripped yarn back up.

Usually when I hit this point in a project it means I ought to be working on something else, but a) I don’t especially want to work on anything else and b) I wanted these gloves done this year so I could wear them for the Christmas season, which now measures three more weeks. So I should just suck it up, buckle down, and finish them. We’ll see how that goes…

The good news is that I have not suffered from similar problems with my reading. Yes, it’s slowed down some from the pace I had earlier this fall, but I’m still on pace to surpass my goal of reading 60 books this year.

Delancey (my apologies for the incorrectly focused shot) was written by Molly Wizenberg, who writes the cooking blog Orangette and co-hosts the food podcast Spilled Milk. I don’t remember how I stumbled across her blog, but I follow a handful of food writers and she is one of them. She has a light style that I appreciate, and when she and fellow food writer Matthew Amster-Burton decided to talk about food in an audio format, Rudi and I took to it right away, enjoying their humor and their willingness to visit any subject, from less common apple varieties to the junk food of the 1980s. I did not read Molly’s first book, but Delancey is a) about opening a pizza restaurant and b) has appeared on several best-of lists, so I figured I’d give it a shot. It seemed particularly timely since Rudi is currently trying to figure out what his career dreams look like from here in our 40s and how to get himself on the pathway to achieve them. I’m hoping that seeing how another couple worked through it will prove enlightening, at the very least, if not helpful.

Not yarning along with Ginny.

While I have hopes in the final two weeks of the year of sharing some of the things I’ve been reading in 2014, I thought it was time to start planning for next year. I know I’ve been woefully bad at blogging books since I did that stint of judging the Cybils two years ago, really, and I’d like to get back to writing about what I’m reading again.

I’d also like to broaden my reading a bit and so am planning to join a few reading challenges/readalongs in 2015 in addition to my annual participation in Carl’s Once Upon a Time challenge.

First up is Play On, hosted by Half-Filled Attic. This challenge asks participants to read a play a month for the first four months of the year, divvying them up by era: ancients, Renaissance, post-Renaissance, and a freebie of your choosing.

This seems reasonable and jibes with my desires to read more non-novels, to read more classics, and to read a Shakespeare play a year. I may be looking for some suggestions as we get closer.

As you may have seen, I had an ambitious weekend filled with holiday activities planned for Rudi’s absence.

It didn’t go according to plan.

I mean, I still got things done.

I hit three holiday markets/craft fairs — the DC Women’s Business Center Holiday Bazaar, the Upshur Street Art and Craft Fair, and the GRUMP Market — and did some shopping at each one. I’m not done shopping, but I’m probably in better shape than usual this far out from Christmas (yes, I totally realize I just gave you early planners a heart attack with that statement). I need to finish my online shopping over the next day or two and then hopefully finish the local shopping next weekend.

I rode my bike to take advantage of the mild, dry weather.

I vacuumed, did a load of laundry, and cleaned off my desk. Apparently it had been longer than I’d thought since I’d done the last did that latter item. But I couldn’t work on my Christmas mix or write my Christmas cards without taking care of it. (Yes, I suppose I could write Christmas cards in ink that isn’t red or green, but that’s what I like to do. But I did really need to clear things out of the way to access my cd drive on the computer before I could import some of my new holiday tunes.)

I learned all about the new composting system at my community garden and helped get it set up for us to begin using it.

I read Paul Auster’s holiday piece, “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story.” It was, as Auster hoped, unsentimental, but also maybe not quite as cheering as I was looking for this weekend. Don’t get me wrong: it’s quite good. Just not an especially good match for my mood. If your mood is more upbeat than mine and you have a spare 10–15 minutes, I’d recommend the book. ISOL’s illustrations are particularly striking and fit with my Sesame Street-inspired impressions of New York City in the 1970s. I have Frank Baum’s and J.R.R. Tolkein’s Christmas books in my drawer at work, so I’m hopeful they’ll be more to my taste.

I ate the spiciest grilled cheese ever (it had habaneros in it) and drank a delightful housemade soda (plum-cinnamon).

I started work on my Christmas mix by eliminating some of the carryover songs from last year and by adding some new ones. I’m a little negligent about locating the tracks I’ve been wanting to include, so need to get moving more solidly on that.

I watched the Garfield Christmas special from the ’80s, the “Blizzard” episode of Fame (which did not take place at Christmas, as I’d misremembered it doing), and the first episode of the new TNT show, The Librarians. (I never saw any of the movies, but Amazon offers them for streaming. I guess I’ll have to decide if my boycott of them extends to their non-physical products…) The CW is airing the episodes a week later than the cable premieres and it’s online, so I’d recommend watching. It’s Indiana Jones meets nerds.

I’m still hoping to paint my nails, do the handwashing, and put away my summer clothes (not in that order) tomorrow morning, but as of right now, those are untackled, as is the baking (I got as far as planning what I was going to make, but not actually to getting off the couch). No cards got written, but I’ve pulled everything out that’s needed to get started on them, so perhaps that will happen tomorrow night after Rudi and I get home from the airport. I didn’t do as much knitting as I would have liked, but it required too much effort to open the knitting bag sitting next to me. And while I dozed on the sofa quite a bit (the one good thing about Rudi being away is that I had options for where to lounge), I wouldn’t really say I got enough sleep, and I felt it.

Speaking of which, I’m going to toddle off to bed now in hopes of getting up early enough in the morning to do those things before work.

Weekending along with Pumpkin Sunrise.