The dog has a new toy

and it's too much for her. Any kind of special, over-the-top, bone-like toy tends to put her over the edge. It's exciting at first, and she trots around with it clamped in her mouth, looking for a place to plop down and take her time with it, savor it. But that quickly turns to panic. The toy is TOO good. It must be protected!

Next step is the hiding. Outside to bury it? Or, in the case of crappy weather, inside? Which leads to more frantic decisions. Under a blanket? Under the couch cushion? Inside the couch cushion?  

The last time she had a fancy toy like this she wore some of the skin of her nose off during all of that manic nudging and covering. I don't know why we thought this time would be any different. 

But we are people of hope. And love for our dog... And impulse buys.

Speaking of, I have to confess I haven't been doing very well on my Purposeful Purchasing promise. Only seven weeks into it, and I've bought books (these were signed at an author event and I really really wanted them!) and a new pair of jeans (total boredom impulse buy, but I sorta needed them). 

On Valentine's Day I bought a box of chocolate covered strawberries. But I can slip that in the food category, right? And a plant (a gift). Other gifts: Comfort Soups for friends recovering from surgery and a dear friend mourning the loss of a loved one. 

Also: a new furnace. And a dinner out with friends. Tickets to an author event. An airline ticket to visit a faraway and much missed friend. A new dog toy.

I was going to say, forget that stupid resolution. I obviously have trouble with spending. But then I went back and read what I'd actually agreed to and realized that except for the new jeans, I haven't broken any of my own rules. Old Me of Seven Weeks Ago made exceptions for gifts. And furnaces. And food. And even dog toys.  

But that really was an impulse buy and a dumb one, knowing what we know about our dog. There we were though, in the pet store, buying her special easy-on-her-digestive-issues million-dollar dogfood, and everywhere you looked there were all of those fancy toys and forever-lasting bones and colorful balls and teeth-cleaning chewy-sticks. 

We bought the toy and three minutes after giving it to our dog, and seeing her panic, we took it away. 

A lesson in something. Making rules versus breaking them. Taking a chance versus facing reality. The entire cycle of hope and love. Forgiveness too. For the dog and her not so funny fears. 

And for us, for forgetting before remembering again. 

Goal Setting at the Edge of the Earth

It's January, a new year, my usual time for looking ahead, making resolutions, setting my writing goals and other goals-- projects to tackle around the house and in the garden, resolving to eat better and exercise more and volunteer and contribute to the community in a positive way, reading my poem a day and reading more, in general, and in a variety of genres.

I can go on and on with these goals, because I am a big believer in setting them, making lists, and tracking progress, all of which, I realize, lately, relies entirely on my faith in the future,

that I will be there, in the future

that there will be a future.

It's a scary realization, one that I haven't felt in a long time, but lately it's come back to me, how nothing is certain, how my fate-- how all of our fates-- are dependent on forces beyond our control, a feeling I understood instinctively when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old.

Back then I didn't have much faith in the future. I wasn't a big-time follower of the news, but a lot of it filtered into my head anyway, news about the arms race between our country and the Soviet Union, the Cold War amping up.

I watched the movies about nuclear war, The Day After and War Games, listened to music where rock stars wondered if the Russians loved their children too, read about downed airlines and uprisings in Eastern European countries, heard stories about nuns chaining themselves to fences outside nuclear weapons plants.

In the 1980's we were wise enough to know that if there was a nuclear war, no one was going to stumble out of it alive, and we mocked the deluded people of the 1950's who had disaster drills in schools, the kids told to hide under desks, as if cowering under a desk would save them.

I'm not saying I thought about potential total annihilation every moment, but it was hovering in the back of my mind, the near certainty that something really bad could happen at any moment-- on purpose or by accident--

and we would all be done for.

So, why bother studying for the SATs or doing your homework or making any plans, really?

But the thing is I did study for my SATs (not that it helped all that much since I was pretty dingy when it came to taking standardized tests). And I always did my homework. I applied for part-time jobs and filled out college applications. I moved forward as if the future would be there for me,

and, what do you know? it was.

Which I guess is my long way of saying that I did set my goals for the year 2018, because while I know there is no certainty that we'll all make it to the end of it, I am going to move forward as if we will.

For the record, my goals:

1. finish the revision of my middle grade novel
2. jump back into the adult novel I set aside last spring
3. write four blogs a month, plus one over at YA Outside the Lines
4. read a poem a day; read more, in general, in a variety of genres
5. eat better and exercise more (10,000 steps per day according to my Fitbit!)
6. paint the exterior of the house
7. expand my herb garden
8. volunteer and contribute to the community in a positive way (in Real Life as opposed to on social media)
9. take monthly dates with my husband
10. remember to live in the moment, which is all we truly have.

In Which I Greet My House and Express My Gratitude for My Can Opener

After I wrote a handful of blog posts about decluttering my house, people began sharing with me their own stories of decluttering. The general consensus seems to be that

1. we all have accumulated way too much crap that we don't really need

2. once you get rid of a lot of that stuff, you never miss it

3. in fact, you feel pretty darn great after the stuff is gone

Several of those people suggested I read the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. And recently, I did. 

It's a fascinating and strange little book. 

It reads, at first, like an expanded version of a "how to organize" article in a magazine. There are tips and tricks for choosing what to keep and throw away, pointers on where to store things, pages on how to fold your clothes properly and place them in your drawer. (Don't stack! Think vertical!) 

Intermingled with stories about Kondo's history as a compulsive tidier (it began, in earnest, when she was in first grade and volunteered to clean up her classroom), and descriptions of her clients' over-stuffed homes and apartments, (she is fond of comparing messy closets to tangled up noodles).

Plus, there's a whole lotta fun, new age-y gems like these:

"Possessions that have a place where they belong and to which they are returned each day for a rest are more vibrant."

and

"Have you ever had the experience where you thought what you were doing was a good thing but later learned that it had hurt someone? ...This is somewhat similar to how many of us treat our socks."

I confess that I have never considered how my socks feel when I ball them up and stuff them in a drawer (not happy Marie Kondo tells me). Also, I don't greet my house when I walk through the door, and I fail to thank my purse and paperclips and pot holders for fulfilling their duties each day.  

But joking aside, I like Kondo's decluttering philosophy, which can be boiled down to Get rid of the things that don't bring you joy. 

This is easier said than done.

Something I learned over the course of my year of purging is that it takes energy to make the decision to get rid of things, especially when so many of those things are imbued with emotion, memories, expectation, obligation, duty, and guilt. It's overwhelming and often paralyzing to even look at some of our things, much less let them go. 

Kondo's advice is that we should "make a parting ceremony to launch [our things] on a new journey." Celebrate the occasion, she says. Tell them to have a good trip. 

It's absurd, and yet, hey! If it helps...

The book concludes with success stories of Marie Kondo's clients after they've gone through her decluttering course. Their acne cleared up! They lost weight! Something something freaky and gross about the digestive system! But she ties it together with a lovely thought:

It's not about cleaning or organizing or carting stuff off to Goodwill, "the question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life." 

I believe you, Marie.

Last year during a particularly cold weekend, my husband I burned three shoeboxes full of old check registers and credit card statements. Okay, we did not perform a ceremony, but we did take turns reading aloud from select pages as we tossed them into the fireplace. Hey, did you know we wrote a check for $12.50 to Dominos in Memphis in 1992? Huh, remember that time we joined a gym and never went but paid the monthly fee for three years? Shoot, can you believe how little we used to pay for rent? 

Laughing and sometimes pausing to sputter out mournful nostalgic sighs, we watched our past go up in flames. 

It was a nice way to spend an evening together. 

Two Sure-Fire Ways to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

Resolutions are big in my family. 

We make them and mock them. We egg each other on to keep them. And break them. 

It helps that we write them down. 

Every year, for the past fourteen years, we've hosted a New Year's Eve party with the same group of friends. One of the party-goers, the most resolute of the resolution-makers, (for the purposes of this blog, we will call this person "Deb") records everyone's resolutions. She used to do this on a scrap of paper, but one year her resolution was to buy a blank book that would be used for the sole purpose of recording resolutions.

"Deb" has now become the Keeper of the Resolution Book. 

"Deb" with "the book." It's "fun" to flip through this book
and see what resolutions we made (and broke) over the years.

I know that not everyone is a fan of making resolutions. If you want to make a goal, make a goal. is what some people say. Why do you need to do it on Dec. 31? 

Also, a lot of people make resolutions and then break them like, three days later, as many gym workers will tell you. 

All true. But there is a reason why resolution-making on New Year's Eve has become a tradition. (See here on Wikipedia about how it can be traced back to the Babylonians and the Romans.) (Another fun Wiki tidbit: 88% of all resolution makers fail.) 

Anyway, after fourteen years, "Deb" and I consider ourselves experts on how to make--and successfully keep--resolutions. If you want to be one of the 12%, read on.

1. Say your resolutions out loud. In front of a witness. Or fifteen.

There's power in verbalizing what you plan to do. I would venture to say that it is the very first step in achieving any goal. You've got to name it. Lose ten pounds. Run a marathon. Finish a novel. Whatever. You won't do it, if you can't say it. And having witnesses adds a bit of peer pressure, people who will hold you to it. 

Last year my husband and I made a joint resolution to visit cultural sites around the city. We took pictures of the various sites and sent them to the Keeper of the Book. 

A Chihuly sculpture at the Columbus Museum of Art

Side note: Attending a Food Truck Festival does not count. According to "Deb."

Sometimes the peer pressure aspect can really spur you on. For the past four years my husband resolved to paint the trim on our house. Last summer we vacationed with "Deb" and family and they joked about how that resolution had become something of a rolling resolution for my husband. Ha ha, they said to him. Wonder what your resolution will be this year? 

We got home from vacation and my husband painted the trim on the house.  

Which brings me to number two. 

2. Set a low bar. 

Painting the house trim is hard. I do not recommend resolving to do hard things like that. Lose weight? Run a marathon? Who are we kidding? 

When my kids were little, simply getting dressed and venturing out of the house seemed like a fairly big deal. I had only one resolution:

Wash my face every day. 

I confess that I did not always achieve this lofty goal, but it was something to shoot for and most days, I did, in fact, manage to accomplish it. 

Now that I think of it, I was usually the only person who remembered and successfully kept my resolution. 

So forget everything I said. 

Make resolutions. Or not. Break resolutions. Or keep them. 

Whatever you do on New Year's Eve, I hope it is done (or not done) while surrounded by dear friends.

Cheers.

Last year on New Year's Eve moments before the resolutions
are shared and recorded... and forgotten.

I Fail Spectacularly at my Attack the Stack Reading Challenge

It was a totally doable goal.

I thought.

Gather up the books around my house--books I'd been meaning to dip into for a while (sometimes, for years). Used books from library book sales. Brand new books piled next to my bed or in the bathroom. Books for work. Trashy books and high brow literature and skipped-along-the-way classics--gather ALL of these books together, stack them up, and, um, READ them over the course of the year.

Since I am a goal oriented person, a dutiful rule follower who delights in fun challenges, I thought I could easily "win."

Turns out I am a rule breaker with an anti-authoritarian streak. Yes, I am aware that the authority in the equation happens to be myself.

I did not read all the books in my stack. In fact, I ended up with another stack. And these stacks reproduced to create others.

Here are the books on my bedside table...

And look! Here are the books piled precariously next to my head as I am writing this blog post.

And the remainders of the other stacks, plus new arrivals.

Some stuff I learned about myself despite my spectacular failure:

1. I want to read what I want to read when I want to read it.
2. I still have a hard time putting a book down when I don't like it. I DID do this a few times, but I felt guilty. It's stupid and silly but there you go.
3. I am glad I attempted this challenge anyway. I read some books that were amazing, books I'm not sure I would've picked up if they hadn't been on my stack.
4. BUT, I also discovered new (or new to me) books that I didn't want to put off reading, and I like the freedom of being able to read those without feeling some weird self-imposed guilt.
5.  A side note here: I love reading YA books, but I think I need more of a mixture when it comes to genres and age groups. Some of my favorite books this year fell totally outside my comfort zone of reading taste.
5. I want to make another challenge for this year, something that gives me the challenge-y/goalish push that I kinda need, while at the same time providing the wiggle room/flexiness that I apparently need too.

So, without further ado I hereby introduce the 2014 FLEXY BOOK CATEGORY CHALLENGE!!!

Read at least one book per category. That's it. The only rule.

The Categories

1. YA contemporary
2. YA fantasy/Sci Fi/dystopian
3. YA historical
4. YA from a debut writer
5. YA from a writer I've missed along the way
6. Adult fiction
7. Adult non-fiction
8. A classic I'm ashamed to say I've never read
9. A re-read of an old favorite
10. Poetry
11. A short story collection
12. A graphic novel
13. A picture book
14. A middle grade book
15. A book on the craft of writing

PS. I am not giving up on my stack; there are lots of very cool-looking books that I suspect I will love if I pick them up.

For the record, here are the books I read in 2013 with a note if they were on the original stack and a link if I reviewed.

1. Altered, Jennifer Rush (stack)
2. Crown of Embers, Rae Carson (stack)
3. Send, Patty Blount
4. The Earth, My Butt, & Other Round Things, Carolyn Mackler (stack)
5. Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson (stack)
6. Divergent, Veronica Roth (stack)
7. Ask the Passengers, A. S. King (stack)
8. Try Not to Breathe, Jennifer R. Hubbard
9. Henry Franks, Peter Adam Solomon
10. Pushing the Limits, Katie McGarry
11. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
12. Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, Deb Caletti (stack)
13. The Arrival, Shawn Tan
14. Tales from Outer Suburbia, Shawn Tan
15. What I Was, Meg Rosoff (stack)
16. Insurgent, Veronica Roth
17. You Look Different in Real Life, Jennifer Castle
18. Tension of Opposites, Kristina McBride
19. The Fiction Class, Susan Breen (stack)
20. Raven Boys, Maggie Steifvater (stack)
21. A Trick of the Light, Lois Metzger
22. High Tide in Tucson, Barbara Kingsolver (stack)
23. Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
24. Being Henry David, Cal Armistead
25. Where I Want to Be, Adele Griffin (stack)
26. Picture Perfect, Alessandra Thomas
27. Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo (stack)
28. Pretty Girl, 13, Liz Coley
29. The Ward, Jordana Frankel
30. Soul of a Dog, Jon Katz (stack)
31. Many Stones, Carolyn Coman (stack)
32. Reboot, Amy Tintura
33. The Lucy Variations, Sara Zarr
34. 17 & Gone, Nova Ren Suma
35. How My Summer Went up in Flames, Jennifer Doktorski
36. Dear Life You Suck, Scott Blagdon
37. Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets, Evan Roskos
38. Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell
39. The Very Thought of You, Rosie Alison (stack)
40. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham (stack)
41. Miss Peregrine's House for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
42. The Bitter Kingdom, Rae Carson
43. Insomnia, JR Johanson
44. Fat Kid Rules the World, KL Going
45. The Fifth Wave, Rick Yancey
46. The Ballad of Jessie Pearl, Shannon Hitchcock
47. Send Me a Sign, Tiffany Schmidt
48. The Sweet Dead Life, Joy Preble
49. The Beginning of Everything, Robyn Schneider
50. Rotten, Michael Northrop
51. Elsewhere, Richard Russo
52. Morning Girl, Michael Dorris
53. Rufus Goes to School, Kim Griswell
54. The Last Anniversary, Liane Moriarty
55. Burning, Elana K. Arnold
56. September Girls, Bennett Madison
57. Fall for Anything, Courtney Summers
58. If You Find Me, Emily Murdoch
59. The Sixes, Kate White
60. Until It Hurts to Stop, Jennifer R. Hubbard
61. Famous Last Words, Jennifer Doktorski
62. The Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Laini Taylor
63. Lonesome Road, Martha Bennett Stiles
64. Never Let You Go, Emma Carlson Berne
65. Okay For Now, Gary D. Schmidt  (stack)
66. Me Before You, Jojo Moyes
67. Bloom, Elizabeth Scott
68. Cracked up to Be, Courtney Summers
69. Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers
70. Writing Past Dark, Bonnie Freidman
71. Wired for Story, Lisa Cron
72. Loving Frank, Nancy Horan (stack)
73. This Is Not a Test, Courtney Summers
74. A Summons to Memphis, Peter Taylor

Attack the Stack 2013 Reading Challenge

Hi. My name is Jody and I have a book collecting problem.

I buy books at bookstores. I check books out of libraries. I buy used books from library book sales. Somehow I even attract free books--I win them in contests that I don't remember entering, and I get advanced copies of books that haven't been released yet from the most awesome bookstore in Columbus, Cover to Cover. Also, people like to give me books as presents. Thanks!

But I am having trouble reading all of these books. I pile them in teetering stacks on my bedside table, on the window sill in the bathroom, on the desk in my office. These teetering stacks taunt me daily, and yet, I cannot stop myself from buying/from borrowing/from accepting more.

Something must be done. And since I am all about goals and resolutions and rules, I have come up with an idea that just might solve my problem: what I shall call my Attack the Stack 2013 Reading Challenge. (If YOU, dear reader, suffer from the same problem, feel free to join me in this quest...)

THE RULES

1. Gather all of the to-be-read books from around the house and pile them into one fun giant stack.
2. Read the books (Resolution: read 4 books per month from the stack. Which allows a little wiggle room for new releases, cool stuff that comes along, etc.)
3. PUT A "MEH" BOOK DOWN. (A big issue for me as a former English teacher/English major/guilt-prone Catholic school girl.) I am thinking I will give a book a chance up to a third of the way through before quitting on it.

See pic below. Note that I had to make two piles and even that was a little precarious.

I actually enjoyed doing this part of my challenge--finally getting a good look at all of the books I've been collecting and meaning to read for the past few years. It's an interesting mix, maybe kinda weird too. YA stuff, of course, but also some adult fiction and classics.

The list TBR in no particular order

1. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
2. Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
3. Trouble by Kate Christensen
4. The Fiction Class by Susan Breen
5. Soul of a Dog by Jon Katz
6. Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
9. Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti
10. The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison
11. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
12. The Shadow Society by Marie Rutkoski
13. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
14. Promised by Caragh O'Brien
15. Crewel by Jennifer Albin
16. The Corrections by Jonathan Frazen
17. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
18. Return to Me by Justina Chen
19 Altered by Jennifer Rush
20. Ask the Passengers by A.S. King
21. Crown of Embers by Rae Carson
22. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
23. Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt
24. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
25. Waiting for You by Susane Colasanti
26. Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan
27. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
28. Many Stones by Carolyn Coman
29. High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
30. Loserville by Peter Johnson
31. What I Was by Meg Rosoff
32. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
33. A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs
34. Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls
35. Waiting for Aphrodite by Sue Hubbell
36. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
37. Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
38. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
39. Big Mouth & Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates
40. The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman
41. Atonement by Ian McEwan
42. Liesl & Po by Lauren Olver
43. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
44. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
45. Divergent by Veronica Roth
46. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audry Niffenegger
47. Where I Want to Be by Adele Griffin
48. Vegan, Virgin, Valentine by Carolyn Mackler
49. Diviners by Libba Bray

Tune in throughout the year as I blog about my progress...

Highs and Lows and Stuff in Between

There's a freaky quietness in my house, where I've found myself with like, one hour between the departure of Christmas guests and the arrival of New Year's guests. It's just me and the dog and a ton of dirty laundry. Plus, I've got to clean the bathrooms and figure out what I'm making for dinner (I'm leaning toward one of my favorite dishes called "Ordering Out for Pizza"), but instead I am sneaking off to write the world's fastest thrown together blog post, a wrap up of my year, inspired by one of my new writer friends from YA Outside the Lines, Stephanie Kuehnert--see here for her wrap up of her year.

Some people hate making New Year's Resolutions, but I am not one of those people. I'm all about goal setting and list making and crossing stuff off of lists. Also, I like to make new lists with the stuff I didn't cross off other lists. I've got broad yearly goals (last year I promised to earn money and to stop whining about potential book deals, which I am happy to say that I accomplished, for the most part). I've got weekly goals and daily goals and sometimes hourly goals. For example, "Turn off all social media and see how many words I can write in one hour. Go." When I don't meet my self-imposed goals, I feel antsy and annoyed and ticked off at myself. As self-disciplined as I am, there is always this worry in the back of my head: today I'm short on my word count goal, tomorrow I could be parked out on the couch watching a Bachelorette marathon.

At New Year's I like to take stock, see what I really did accomplish (and let fall through the cracks).

So here's my list.

On the writing front

Well, I got a book deal for my novel Thin Space! Which seems like the biggest accomplishment of all time, considering it was a goal I'd been working toward for as long as I can remember. The weird thing is that it felt kind of anti-climactic when it happened. I sort of knew it was going to come together last year around this time and it all got dragged out in a way that sometimes drove me insane. I got THE CALL in January but didn't sign the contract until the end of April, and then there were revisions to work on and other odds and ends, but the real making of that book felt long finished before 2012. Still. I am not complaining! I love this book and love the cool people (Beyond Words/Simon Schuster) who bought it, and have enjoyed participating in the whole publishing a book process.

But while all that was going on I was working on other things too. I wrote a first draft of a book that shall not be named here (yet). It's a raw, funny, painful, very personal and yet not personal, potentially cool YA--a giant mess of a first draft, probably the longest one I've every written, close to 100,000 words. I know this will be greatly trimmed and overhauled and revised some day. Not sure when. Haven't even looked at the thing since I finished it back in April. It's still, as Stephen King would say, marinating.

I revised Thin Space with an editor, my first working-with-an-editor experience and it was awesome. Here is one instance where I am grateful that it took me so long to sell one of my books. The old writerly me of fifteen years ago would've freaked out about the number of editorial suggestions and comments, wondering if I could even do what was needed. The me today is like, Bring it.

And after that, I plunged back into an old manuscript. This is my fourth time through it and probably won't be the last, but I think I am getting closer. I realized that my work this summer with my editor helped me as a writer too. I am almost embarrassed to say this, but the old writerly me used to look at a manuscript and know there was something off about it and think, let's see if an editor catches this, and if she does, she'll tell me what to do. Here's the thing: they don't really tell you what to do. They just point out what's not working. You're the one who has to figure out how to fix it. Sometimes it's going to take a lot of work. But what else am I going to do with my time? Watch Bachelorette reruns?

Kind of writer-related

I blogged fairly regularly and did some social media stuff: fixed up my website and made an author Facebook page and tweeted a bunch on Twitter (maybe too much?!) and compiled a mailing list and did some marketing/promotion research.

I set up a few school visits (my daughter's English class at the high school and a day with her old middle school language arts teacher) and had a blast dipping my rusty teacherly toes back into the classroom. I also dropped in on a creative writing club and a teen book club at a local library.

   

On the reader front

Here's where I feel kind of disappointed in myself. The year before I read 92 books and I thought that was on the low side. This past year I only read 72 (I keep track in a little notebook). My main problem (besides my obsession with my new iPad and the fun distraction of social media) is that I have such a hard time quitting on a book that I don't like. There were some weeks where I struggled through the same dumb book rather than flinging it across the room and picking up something I enjoyed. Lesson I must remember: when I love a book, it is no struggle at all to read it; in fact, it is the only thing I want to do. Books I loved loved loved this year in no particular order: Gayle Forman's Just One Day, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, In the Woods by Tana French, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Every Day by David Levithan, All You Never Wanted by Adele Griffin.  

Not writer or reader related

Got my oldest child off to the college of his dreams and didn't fall completely apart. (It helped that we got a puppy.)

Took some cool trips--to NYC, to the beach in North Carolina, to a parents' weekend at my son's college, to a lake for a mother/daughter weekend trip.

But mostly I just lived my regular normal day to day life (besides a good 6 to 8 hours per day of writing) there's mothering my daughter and walking my dog and making meals and watching movies with my husband and visiting with neighbors and friends and putzing around in my garden. These are the things I don't write about and pretty much take for granted. Which is silly and sad, and I want to say something profound here about how those unexamined and non-reflected-upon moments ARE the moments that make up my life, and forget how many words I write or books I read or tweets I tweet, these are the moments that are truly important, especially when you think about how short life ultimately is or something horrible happens like what happened in Connecticut a few weeks ago and you know that those people would give anything--would give everything probably--just to have a mundane packing-a-lunch-for-their-kid moment back.

Oh! I want to write about this! But an hour has passed and my dog is barking and I still have toilets to clean and sheets to get on the beds and pizza to order for our wonderful dear amazing friends who will be here any moment...

(Choices part 4--from xkcd)