Like a Runaway Horse - Random Thoughts on the End of 2019

I don’t mean to sound like some cliché-addled whiner today, but here goes anyway: Where has 2019 gotten to? I realized just today that reading-wise I’m not prepared for it to end just 26 days from now. I still have way too much to do.

Every year, I prepare a couple of Top Ten lists for December posting, one for fiction and one for non-fiction. I limit the lists, of course, to the books I’ve actually read and reviewed on Book Chase, so in the great scheme of things, they don’t much reflect the big picture. But they do represent my personal reading year, and when I go back and look at the lists from prior years they remind me of all the great books I’ve already read – and they get me excited about all the great ones already out there in the pipeline for the next year. 

But this year, I’ve got at least three unread books on my desk that I know very likely deserve to be on one or the other of the two lists. I’ve read the authors before, some of their previous books are among my longtime favorites, and I was so excited to get my hands on the books in the first place that I shelled out the hardcover price for each of them the week they were published. Problem is, they were published in October or November and I don’t think I’ll be able to read them before next year because of the books I’ve already lined up for December reviews. (And I really don’t want to rush through them anyway and cheapen the experience of reading some of my favorite writers.) I suppose the good news is that they were published so late in the year, that I can, by my standards (books published between October 1 of the previous year and December 31 of the current year are list-eligible), consider them for my 2020 lists. 

The Unpeelable Sticker 

And I suppose that I should confess to being something of a reading contrarian. I’ve mentioned before how I find celebrity-headed book clubs to be cringe-worthy. Oprah is pushing it? Reese Witherspoon chose it for “Reese’s Book Club? Well, no thanks then. Honestly, I’m kind of embarrassed to be seen carrying around a book with one of their book club stickers on the cover because it makes me feel like a little lost lamb in a very large herd of sheep. And now to make things even worse, many of the books they choose come with their "stickers" actually printed as part of the book's cover; you can’t peel the sticker off even if you want to. 

That’s why I may be the last person in the world to read 2018’s Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I’m about 200 pages into the 34^th printing (geez, how many millions of copies has this book sold) of the book right now, but even that probably would not have happened if my wife had not mentioned last month that she thought she would enjoy it. So, dutiful husband that I am (it’s OK to laugh), I came home with a copy the next day. She loved it – although that’s not always a good sign because she also loves just about every Hallmark movie she’s ever watched. But 200 pages into Crawdads, I’m starting to think that she is right about the book.

Too, I wish I didn’t feel so much like a magpie these days. I’m just as guilty of acquiescing to an urge to acquire every shiny new trinket I spot (brand new books) as that well known flying-thief is. And that means that I have read exactly nine books so far this year that were on my shelves on the first day of 2019. Nine! And I have dozens of them staring at me all day long from my shelves and waiting patiently for their turn to finally come along. Some of them, I keep reminding myself, have been sitting there since the mid-eighties and I’m starting to wonder if they will ever be read. (That may become an official challenge for next year, now that I think about it.)

Don’t let all of this whining make you think that I’m not excited about the rapid approach of 2020 and all that a brand new year offers, because I am, and I can’t wait to see what our book world has in store for all of us next year.  As I’ve said here many times before, readers are special people and book-blogging is the best way to bring some of them together where I can enjoy their company and be a more active part of the reading community. Thank you for being part of that community.

So, ready or not, I can’t wait for 2020.