New Year, Same Site

Every time the thought of resolutions for 2009 passes through my mind, I can hear the sweet strains of Death Cab for Cutie, “So this is the new year. / I don’t feel any different.”

I don’t, and no wonder. I was all set to write a December post apologizing for light posting when I saw, thanks to the slightly new format here, that I wrote three more posts in 2008 than in 2007. 2006, the year I had a maternity leave, saw a handful more. In short, my reading and blogging life seems to fall in to a pretty distinct pattern, one that is a surprise only to me.

As for resolutions, I seem to have dropped into 2009 at a rocket's pace. Reflection time has been curtailed. On New Year’s Eve, we were visiting my mother-in-law in Utica, skiing Mt. McCauley in the Adirondacks. I fell asleep by 8:30 and we spent the first day of the New Year driving back down to the city. The next day, I thought I’d catch up here, but the toddler woke up with a raging ear infection. The following day was Saturday, thanks to penicillin, the ear infection had abated enough for us to go to the park where she was scratched by a squirrel! (She couldn’t resist feeding it some of the fish crackers that another toddler had dropped on the ground. I said NO! but she is 2: "No" means, "Try it for yourself.") It turns out, one ER visit later, that squirrels don't carry rabies. Good to know.

All of this to say that I’ve been reading Scott’s series on reading resolutions and Sarah’s amazing accounts of daily books with interest, but the most I seem able to do is an occasional update to my twitter feed.

But, now the semester begins and it’s that lovely new moment in which I feel like this is the semester when the work won’t get away from me….so, Alison Light, Tanguy Viel, Eloisa James, Jean Rhys: it’s hard to know where I’ll go next, but there’s a lot awaiting the telling.