It is January, probably my least favorite month of the year, so I set myself to the task of putting away the old year and making plans for the new. Last year was not what I anticipated. It took all year to recover from ankle surgery instead of the quick healing I anticipated. I didn’t travel as much but I enjoyed the few trips I took and found them joyful and healing. But what I did do last year was read and read and read. I needed a lot of time resting with my feet up and this was the best way to pass the time. I had my personal best year at 77 books.  Some were huge tomes, some short middle grade, some wonderful with a permanent place on my shelf and some went straight to the sell pile. This year I kept a list so I can look back on each month so this year I’m going to organize my favorites by month.  Let’s look back and see what I read.

January: This month was heavy on the classics with Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (love), The Tale of Two Cities by Dickens and East of Eden by Steinbeck.  It was a snowy month and I had lots of time to read Steinbeck and I blew through it in a couple of weeks. My spiritual read for the month was Thomas Merton’s Asian Journals. Insightful and poignant as this journal documented his final trip before his accidental death in Thailand at the end of his journey.  As I read closer to that fateful day I was struck by the fragility of our existence—it was a hard ending to read.

February: This is when I was diagnosed with my pain syndrome (CRPS) so I did a lot of reading on the subject of chronic pain. I read a book by one of my former professors, Keiran Le Grice, The Lion Will Become Man, about his journey through a health crisis as an alchemical process. I also read The Library Book by Susan Orlean about the devastating fire in the main branch of the LA public library. A few weeks later I went and visited this gorgeous Art Deco library. A good read and a pilgrimage.

March: Hamilton and I have been reading/listening to classics together so over the winter we read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Farewell to Arms by Earnest Hemmingway and The Prince by Machiavelli.  Since I didn’t have a good classics education in the religious school I attended, I’m enjoying catching up on so many great works of literature. Which leads me to….

April:  I did it! I read/listened to Don Quixote by Cervantes. For months (992 pages) I wandered Spain with the beloved Don Q. What a charming character, what an amazing book! Wow. Has this stood the test of time for one of the oldest novels—and it is funny too. The big thing I’ve learned from Ben at the Hardcore Literature Book Club is that translation is everything.  All these years Don Quixote has been given a bad rap for being too hard to read and sounding like the King James Bible when all he needed is a good translator.  Enter Edith Grossman whose modern translation published in 2003 has Don Q’s adventures still fun after 400 years.  Do yourself a favor and listen to the first few hours and see if you don’t fall in love with this book.  It is one of the top novels of all time.

May: I left Spain to enter the land of the Unicorn as I read several books about the unicorn tapestries before my pilgrimage see them at The Cloisters in NYC. I read The Oak King, The Holy King and The Unicorn by John Williamson. This scholarly but readable book got me ready to spend a delightful afternoon with the Unicorn. I can never get enough of unicorn tapestries. While in NYC I went to Strand Books and found one of the best books of the year. Theoretically there are 23 miles of books at Strand Books.  Where do I even start. So I just went to one history section and stood there until I found a book that looked interesting and then left as I was still not able to stand for very long.  My treasure—Marcel’s Letters by Carolyn Porter. Carolyn bought some old French letters at an antique store in Minnesota because she liked the penmanship.  Then she had them translated and that started her odyssey to find Marcel and learn his story of the French resistance in WWII. This true story is a must read.

June: I read three great classics I can’t believe were new reads for me. First was Walden by Henry David Thoreau in a beautifully illustrated edition. Then Hamilton and I read Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, a very fun story of Victorian manners and power struggles in a small Parish in England. Then I finally read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. Now mind you I knew the story well as I have seen every movie/series adaptation several times. (My favorite is the 1980 version). But the book is much better. What I love about reading the classics rather than just watching the adaptation is I get so much more of the interiority of the characters.  Pride and Prejudice will be on my reread list and Emma is on the TBR for this year.

July: I continued my reading about healing body, mind and spirit.  I read Quantum Mind and Healing by Arnold Mindell and Childhood Disrupted by Donna Nakazwa. Other books I read through the year about healing were The Way Out by Alan Gordon, Unlearn Your Pain by Howard Schubiner, and It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn.  My personal favorite, The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren, had been sitting unread on my shelf for over a decade but it was there waiting for me when I was finally ready to take in the information.

August:  Seems I read a lot of modern novels during the summer. I guess I needed some escape reading.  I read Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, delightful and old-fashioned. The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, perfect for a long layover. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, a wonderful historical novel set in colonial America.  A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr, a short but beautiful novel about healing after the trauma of war.  Manboy by Vince Vawter, Vince is a neighbor of mine who’s coming of age novel is set in 1968 Memphis, Tennessee the weekend Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated.

September: I had several books that didn’t go well or I didn’t finish so I just went for easy and read Courtiers by Valentine Low about life behind the scene in the British royal family.  I also had a lot of housework after a major ceiling repair, so I listened to 84 Charing Cross by Helene Haniff and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.  Just the distraction and company I needed while endlessly cleaning, polishing and painting

October, November, December: Ok, I’m starting to wear down from all this reading so let’s speed this up a bit with the best of the best.  Maid, The Hours, The Book of Pearls, The Soul of Money, The Nest, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Before the Coffee Gets Cold—loved them all.  Hamilton and I finished our year of classics with Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy—the writing is mesmerizing.

Hopefully there are a few books that caught your interest. I’m continuing to love reading the classics and have a whole agenda for this year through The Hardcore Literature Book Club.  I continue to enjoy my neighborhood book club which brings me into the world of modern fiction, and I will always have a spiritual book to savor first thing in the morning as the light comes up.