Oh, right, I still have an LJ.

[desiresuicide]

This is the time of year that I usually update, so I guess I'll do that.

Making New Year's Resolutions was difficult this year, because my life is pretty goddamn awesome right now. I resolved to run a 5k in under 23 minutes, and to go hiking more. Other than that... continuing to revel in the wonderfulness that is grad school, and to carefully maintain my school/family/workout balance. One semester down, so far so good.

Life really is amazing right now. I'm so grateful for it. Interestingly, I have lost a lot of FB friends over the last 6 months or so, and I wonder if there's a connection there. I'm finally getting my life in order, so people unfriend me? I get it. I had to hide people from my feed who seemed to be doing well back when I wasn't. I'm sure there may be other reasons that people are unfriending me; it just seems like weird timing. I don't even post on FB as much as I used to, so I don't think it's because I'm being annoying or anything.

Anyway. I usually post the however-many books I read over the past year, so I guess I'll do that, although there weren't as many this past year due to applying to school/freaking out/actually going to school.

THE 31 BOOKS I READ IN 2014

Although I didn't read as many as usual, I actually read several books that I've been meaning to read for years. I've also been buying fewer books to add to the ENORMOUS collection of books on my shelf that I still need to read. Someday I might actually get through all my books!

1. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read this one out loud to Téa. When I was her age, my mom read it to me, so it was a nice nostalgic read for me. Téa also seemed to enjoy it; she asked a lot of questions about the time period, and it seemed to blow her mind a little bit!
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. 5 stars-- such an excellent, sad, and enthralling book. I can't believe I finished this one a whole year ago; seems like it was more recent.
3. Dreams of Joy by Lisa See. 4 stars. I haven't read a Lisa See book that I haven't enjoyed. This book taught me that I am totally incapable of listening to audiobooks; I tried to listen to it during my long car trips, but ended up having to just read the book because I forgot to pay attention. Oops.
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. 4 stars. Creepy little book.
5. A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan. 3 stars. Not very memorable, honestly.
6. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. Another one from my childhood that I thought would be great for the nostalgia factor, and it was, for the first 3/4 of the book. I never realized what a shitty character this book turns Fern into! She ends up totally obsessed with boys and forgets about her beloved pig, basically. Her brother ends up being the hero. It's so irritating. Thankfully Téa wasn't really paying attention by the end of the book, so I don't think she picked up on how sexist it ends up being. I won't be reading this one to her again.
7. The Cider House Rules by John Irving. 5 stars. I've been meaning to read this one forever, and I wasn't disappointed. It's so different from the movie! They had to change a lot of things to condense it for the movie (it's like a 500 page book), so reading the book was a great experience.
8. Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. 4 stars. Once a year or so I get a hankering for a good survival-in-the-mountains story, and this one was quite good. This was the plane crash in the Andes with the rugby team. The survivors had to resort to cannibalism in order to stay alive.
9. Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin. I don't remember this one super well, but it did pair well with "We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," which I read the year before. Both about Rwanda; the latter was about the genocide, the former was fictional, but set in the aftermath.
10. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera. A bit of a disappointment after reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being (which I loved) years ago. Even after reading summaries of this book, I barely remember it.
11. Possession by A.S. Byatt. Byatt is swiftly becoming one of my favorite authors; this book was incredible. 5 stars. Literature for people who love literature, for sure.
12. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally. One I've been meaning to read forever, and finally did. This book made me really appreciate the movie-- it was incredibly well-casted. What can you say about a book about the Holocaust? Horrifying and enlightening. 5 stars.
13. Divergent by Veronica Roth-- I really wanted to like this one, because I thought the movie trailer was excellent. The book was okay, but kind of disappointing, and then I found out the movie sucked so I didn't even see it.
14. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy -- another I've been meaning to read for ages, but it didn't live up to my very high expectations for Thomas Hardy, whom I usually love. It was good, just not as good as his other books.
15. The Glass Palace by Amitov Ghosh. Oh my lord, this one took me forever to read. It was a huge, dense, ultimately amazing book, but really hard to get into. It was nice to read about a part of the world that I don't usually read about (Burma/Malaysia/India).
16. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. Another one I meant to read forever, and so glad I finally did. 5 stars. Totally did not expect this to be a gay literature classic (how did I not know that? I don't know; I just didnt). I read Baldwin's other book, Go Tell it On the Mountain, years ago, and that one was totally different. Both excellent reads.
17. Native Son by Richard Wright. Another one that had been sitting on my to-read shelf for years and years. SO EXCELLENT. Why didn't I read this one before? This may have been my favorite of the year. It was about a black man in the ... 20s? 30s? Anyway, it was basically Crime and Punishment but set in Chicago, and with a lot more racism.
18. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. I appreciated this one touching on racism in colonial India, but unfortunately I just find Forster to be so, so boring. However, this was another on my to-read list that I finally got through, so that was good.
19. Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Education by John Rury. Excellent book, read for a class.
20. American Education by Joel Spring. Another great book, read for a class.
21. Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality by Joel Spring. Same class as the two above, and best of the three. Basically all about how minorities have been completely screwed over by the educational system for the past few hundred years.
22. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston: So good! So relevant! I actually found it comforting to be so well informed about ebola.
23. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver-- I don't even know. I hated this book, but it was compelling to read. But I hated it.
24. Pet Sematary by Stephen King-- 4 stars. My aunt once told me I'd never be able to get through this book after I had children. I made it through, but it was a pretty rough read. King considers it his scariest book, and he might be right about that.
25. School Psychology for the 21st Century by Kenneth Merrell-- you guessed it, read this one for a class.
26. Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough -- read for a class.
27. Interviewing students for school solutions by John Murphy-- read for a class; probably my favorite read from all my classes this past semester. But probably only interesting if you're learning how to counsel children.
28. The School Psychologist's Survival Guide by Rebecca Branstetter. I read this one to learn more about the field; it pretty much solidified for me that school psych is what I want to do.
29. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy-- good read, but not as good as The Road.
30. A Shining Affliction by Annie Rogers-- I re-read this one that one of my Hampshire professors wrote. Still just as good as it was years ago when I read it.
31. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson-- eh. My sister gave this one to me for Christmas; I hated all the characters in it.

So that's it for 2014! I'm going to continue to try to cram in personal reading during this year (especially during this final week before classes start for me).

In conclusion, regarding the last half of 2014 (basically summing up the last 6 months since I last updated LJ):

School is awesome. Love my field, love my classes, love my classmates, love my field site.

I fell off my workout/running routine toward the end of the semester, due to school craziness, but I am back on the wagon now. I ran a lot of races this past year, and I'm pretty proud of myself for those. High hopes for more races this year!

My BFF moved from Chicago to Boston (like a 10 minute walk from my campus), and that has been ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL. I see her so much! When she lived in Chicago and I lived in NYC, we only saw each other like once a year, so I am incredibly happy about her move.

Téa is doing great in first grade, and we're both dealing pretty well with my school schedule. Anthony's been stepping up his Dad game in my absence, so that's been a load off my mind.

So that's my enormous end-of-year/beginning-of-year update! On to the next semester!