the honey home

reading goals for 2021

I feel slightly guilty for even suggesting such a thing as reading goals. Last year’s goals were never even close to being attained–I never reread the short list of books I wanted to. I did read a ton of other things, though.

However, the new year it is, and new years are for new goals, or really just for lists, perhaps…I don’t think I’d really call this page a goal. It’s more just to organize everything. I don’t think I’ll read all of these books this year. I’m not sure I should read them all this year.

I am not part of any reading challenge, but was inspired by another reading challenge to put my books into categories. Several books overlap categories, so I wanted to arrange them in a way that showed the overlap. Some overlap more than one category, but I couldn’t figure out a way to represent that quickly and easily, so I decided to forego that.

My main categories are:

Essays
Short stories
Female authors
Russian fiction
Translated fiction
Poetry/plays
Non-fiction

There are thirty books in all. A couple are leftovers from last year that I wasn’t able to finish; one is a re-read of one I read last year.

As you can see from the picture, they are arranged as rays radiating from a center. I drew shapes around them showing their common category; they look like petals to me.

I am also trying to keep a “commonplace book” this year of quotes I love.

when I read

I am sometimes asked when I am able to read. The truth is I read during the night while I’m up with the baby, or early in the morning before the kids wake up. Sometimes I read before bed at night, but that’s a little more difficult as I’m usually quite tired then. During the day I read while nursing if I can. Not always–but sometimes. The little bits add up.

Add Title

generic heading, particular apologies

I write so infrequently that, every time I log on to post something, there is a spate of updates to perform on the site before I can continue. This newest update of WordPress revealed upon completion a banner announcing all of the new and improved features; it included on this banner the claim that Code Is Poetry, which seems rather dubious. I will have to think about it.

As always, at the start of another new year I look at my writing habits and wish they were different. I have not been recording much besides the monthly updates of the littlest of the children. To be honest, I have felt muzzled for a few years now. Where exactly this comes from, I’m not sure, but there has been an anxiety borne of insecurity and the persistent thought that I both don’t have the right to talk about things and no one would care what I said if I did. These thoughts are pervasive and very successful at deterring me from writing here as I once did.

I have realized, however, that probably the biggest regret I have of these last few years is the fact I haven’t been writing things down. And regret being stronger than anxiety, I will just have to try harder to push through it–that is, try harder to take the muzzle off.

I generally despise blog posts dedicated to apologizing for not writing very frequently, but here is my explanation, and I had to get it out before I could continue.

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