My New Year’s Reflections (with a small book wish list to go with them)

I’m starting this year with a grateful heart--grateful for the gift of loving family and supportive friends (both online and offline), for the gift of good health and good work, for the gift of daily food, shelter, and safety.

For this blog, I am grateful to you for sticking with me through all my joys and sadness all these past 12 months. I look forward to connecting with you more this year. Rest assured I will continue to blog about short stories. I like them too much to neglect them. I still have a couple of posts due for The Short Story Initiative, which I will continue in 2013. My prediction for this new year, though, is that I will be doing more personal posts than posts about books or short stories I have read... but then again, who knows, anything could happen between now and in December. After all, there are always unique ideas we could find daily in the blogging community. For instance, I came upon Project 196 by Mel U of The Reading Life, which shares 196 short stories from 196 countries (and I think that that’s an amazing idea!).

Visiting blogs recently, I’m amazed at how much many of the book bloggers I know have accomplished so much in the past year. A couple of them are now writing books about their field of expertise (I’m looking at and congratulating you, Hila and Nina). Others posted their blog’s statistics in 2012, wrote about the best books read in 2012, summarized how they fared in the reading challenges they have joined, and announced what they look forward in 2013. Here is wishing you will continue to achieve more in this new year. Keep reading and blogging!

For my part, I am just grateful that I have finally come into terms with being a blogger (I was a traditional news reporter so the transition was quite an adjustment), having established professional working relationships with other bloggers, promoted works by Filipino writers, started a small online community called Cebu Book Club, and won a couple of prestigious awards.

While I will still be blogging as actively as I could, the focus of my 2013 plans will be aligned with my 28 birthday wishes, including (in a nutshell):

- keep my weight at a normal level (or else I, or more like my sensitive spine, will suffer the consequences!) and this means devoting time to exercise
- improve my grammar and write more literary pieces (and I hope to publish them here)
- spend more time for bonding with family and friends
- build a local community of readers with a cause
- support Filipino artists, performers, and writers by patronizing or promoting their works

I guess it wouldn’t hurt to share the books I hope to read in 2013. There are 12 of them--at least one for each month--mostly middle-grade and young adult fiction (but I’m sure this list will grow in the coming months):

Artemis Fowl (Book 1) by Eoin Colfer
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues Book 1) by Rick Riordan
The Fairy Tale Detectives (The Sisters Grimm Book 1) by Michael Buckley
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Book 1: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood
The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making by Catherynne Valente
Stories: All-New Tales by Jeffery Deaver
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Cut Through the Bone by Ethel Rohan
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Have you read some of them? What do you think?

Best wishes and have a wonderful reading experience this New Year!


Nancy