Hot Dog!! We have a wiener!!

First I would like to thank my mom, dad, husband George, my siblings, cousins, friends and colleagues, my entire graduating high school class, my peers at the University of Northern Iowa, my graduate school counterparts in both the history and theology depts., the baristas at my local Starbucks and of course the Almighty Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ….just kidding. I couldn’t help myself since this will most likely be the only victory speech I’ll ever need to write. πŸ˜‰

Wow! What a journey The Book War was over the past year!! To be perfectly honest, when Hannah and I began this battle I was under no delusions that I would win. Hannah is probably the most avid reader I know (after my parents) and I just figured that at least I’d keep reading in a futile attempt to stay in the game. After we were tied at the end of October I thought for sure that we would end up tying and all of our smack talk would be for naught. Alas, somehow the underdog pulled off the win (I am certain Hannah will call ‘foul’ since I didn’t update my book list for the entire month of December until yesterday)! I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that was sketchy or strategic. πŸ˜‰

My final book total was 70 books read which breaks down to 1 1/3 books per week, not too shabby. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I rarely felt ‘tired’ of reading. There were certainly books that became tiresome but reading never became a chore or just one more thing to add to my ‘to do’ list. At times I defaulted to my tried and true genres (historical fiction and mystery) when I couldn’t made myself read anything more involved but those mental breaks were as important to my success as making myself read some books that I would never pick up myself but knew I needed to read. I absolutely must compliment Hannah on her perseverance in finishing the longest book read this year by either one of us, Nelson Mandela’s, Long Walk to Freedom.Β Our book club chose this book in September and I got about 40% finished before I gave up and since I’m the one who usually will not give up on a book, Hannah deserves an Honorable MentionΒ for getting through this beast of a book.

Stay tuned for a New Year Blog from me in which I’ll include some ideas for my reading journey in 2019. Once again, my goals will pale in comparison to Hannah’s but such is life. I am also planning to blog about my switch from paper books to Kindle reading so if you’re thinking about making the switch (for whatever reason) keep an eye out for my future blogs.

Happy 2019, and read on my friends!