May this next year truly be one of peace, where we live for the betterment of the lives of others around us and believe the best in each other first.  May everyone have at least one great meal per day, a blanket to snuggle underneath at night, clean water to drink, access to good medical care and great education (everyone should read!), and political freedom.  These may be lofty dreams and wishes, but even if it doesn’t come to fruition in 2012, I will never, ever, ever stop hoping that it could happen.

I would like to wish for constant electricity, but now that our generator isn’t working (we are waiting for the engineer to come and fix a part) I have found I’m reading even more than I usually would because I don’t have any electronic distractions.  I read 5 books in December alone.  And, this is big news: I reached my goal of reading 20 books in 2011!  In 2010, I half-heartedly set a goal of 20 and lack-lusterdly made it to 16.  Last year, I decided to actually take my goal seriously, and I made it!  I completed the final chapter of my 20th book on the 3oth of December 2011.  I guess I could have tried to squeeze in one more book, but why?  I’ll let my next book count towards my 2012 total (24).

In the spirit of reading challenges, I allowed myself to be sucked in by exposed to online reading challenges.  Some of them are quite ambitious, and since I’m still responsible for educating my children and I can’t just hide away under the covers to read the days away, I am keeping my goals realistically admirable.

I am joining the 2012 Mammoth Book Challenge (Level 1: read 2 mammoth books between January 1st, 2012 – December 31st, 2012)

as well as the

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die 2012 Challenge (Level Made the Olympic Team: 6 – 10 books from the list)

They are modest goals with the added challenge of having specifications for some of the books I’m reading.  I’m sure that I’ll be able to meet my goal with my Charlie and Lola’s new tablet that they got through their education grants for educational purposes but they are very gracious to let me use it for reading ebooks while they are sleeping.  They are such good kids.  I love having access to so many more books!  I don’t have to wait for The Mister to hook me up with my fix.  I just need Amazon!

The first ebook that I tried was from the Top 100 Free ebooks list on Amazon – The Girl Who Couldn’t Say No – you can see it on my Shelfari shelf on my sidebar.  I figured that before I committed to paying actual money for a digital book, I should try it out for as minimal financial cost as possible; free is pretty much as minimal as you can get.  One thing that I really like about reading books is feeling the progress of my reading with my hands.  At the beginning, the section of book that I hold in my left hand is thin.  As time goes on, the pages move from the right to the left; my favourite is when I’m in the very center of the book.  Each hand has an equal portion of the book.  I often sigh, and flip the book forward so that I can see the pages curved out from the spine to really get a visual on where I am in the book.  Then, as the pages thin out in my right hand, I have a mixture of emotions: both elation (I’m almost done!) and despair (I’m going to miss these characters!  We’ve been through so much together!).  I wasn’t sure about reading a digital book because this essential part of my reading ritual would be missing.  How would I know where I’m at in the book?  When can my period of anticipated mourning begin?  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the programmers had weirdos like me in mind when they designed a bar along the bottom of the “page” that shows you exactly where you are in the book.  And the little nerd in me was delighted to discover a new dimension to my progression ritual: the percentage.  The little bar wouldn’t just show me in horizontal bar graph fashion where I was at in the book, nor just the page number, but also the percentage of the book that I’ve finished reading.

The Mister can always tell if I’m going to be reading for much longer and for how long when he can hear me flipping through the pages to see how much I  have left in a chapter.  I don’t like to pause reading in the middle of a page, or even the middle of a chapter.  If I have to pause reading in the middle of a chapter, I prefer to end when a sentence also ends at the end of a page.  I may be a little neurotic.  Can you blame me though?  Look at where I live!  I have to have something that I can control.  Sentences ending at the end of a page?  There could be worse things that get me by.  Like gin.  (ha!  which reminds me of a scene in a movie I saw recently where the mother walks in and says to her daughter, “I’m hungry. Have you got any gin?”  I’m going to totally say that to Lola when she’s older.  I hope I remember…)  With this new percentage-ometer, I can read until I get to an even number or a multiple of 5 before retiring for the night.  I can also read without the light on, and it has a handy-dandy built-in bookmark.  Is it just me, or are bookmarks notoriously difficult to keep tabs on?  I’m always losing them and then I end up using old grocery lists to mark my place. So not chic.

Perhaps I have some strange reading habits, like picking at my bottom lip (I just caught myself doing this as I was proofreading this very post), but I do love reading, which is not a bad habit.  Maybe at the end of my life, the scales will balance out.  But even if they don’t, would you be interested in joining a challenge with me?  If neither of these strike your fancy, there are many more out there that could!  Just Google “2012 Reading Challenges” and you’ll be on your way.

Here’s to a year of peace and endless (digital) page turning.  Here’s to 2012!