Thank God It's Almost Over: Dispatch #16
wrapping up your reading goals and also your christmas presents
Happy Christmas and welcome to December!
2020 is nearly over. Did you ever think we’d make it this far? I truly didn’t. But the end is in sight! If you’re anything like me, you may be feeling that last push to meet the goals, both bookish and non, that you set for yourself back on January 1 (is it too late for me to learn French??)— most people prefer to start strong on their resolutions, but I really like to finish out the year pretending like I’ve been doing great all along.
I don’t have a lot to say to you this week, but I do have a year-end gift: I spent yesterday afternoon wandering my house and pulling books out of piles, some I’ve read and some I haven’t, but all of which I had on hand and all under 250 pages. The resulting list is 20 books, one for each day left in this God-forsaken year. There are essays and mysteries and nonfiction and poetry and almost any genre you could want (no science fiction, sorry) and I present it to you with all the love and approval in the world. Happy Holidays! You’re welcome. If you’re making the mad dash to meet that 2020 reading goal, the best place to start is with a couple of short books. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t it cheating to read a fifty page book and count it towards your reading goal? And the answer is no! Maybe. But this is your goal! You did this to yourself, so you make the rules! Unless of course you’re doing a reading challenge with other people and you didn’t make the rules, in which case I’m sorry but I cannot help you.
Good luck, here we go:
The Secret of the Old Clock, Nancy Drew #1, by Carolyn Keene 180 pages
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith, 82 pages
Little Weirds by Jenny Slate, 221 pages
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, 230 pages (but written in letters back and forth so there’s a lot of blank space)
What is Contemplation? by Thomas Merton, 79 pages
As You Like It by William Shakespeare, 106 pages
Oranges by John McPhee, 141 pages (short and excellent but very dense)
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 48 pages
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron, 137 pages
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, 201 pages
Costalegre by Courtney Maum, 218 pages
N or M? by Agatha Christie, 191 pages
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, 238 pages
Introducing Einstein by Joseph Schwartz and Michael McGuinness, 169 pages
The Independent Woman by Simone de Beauvoir, 112 pages
How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? by Pandora Sykes, 242 pages
Nothing Fancy by Alison Roman, 313 pages (I know, I know, I said these were all under 250- but this is a cookbook which means it’s half pictures and I read it like a book when I got it last year, so I’m counting it. Make your own rules!!)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, 158 pages
Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie, 160 pages
Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl, 96 pages
In the spirit of honesty, I’ve accepted defeat. I’m not going to reach 75 books this year (my original goal), and I’m forcing myself to be okay with that. It was a hard year in a lot of ways, and my ability to focus (a near-nonexistent ability at its best) took a real nosedive around July. But! I’ve set a new goal: one book. I just want to read one more book this year. And that doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s the best I can offer myself right now, so I’m running with it. Let’s hope I can find something short.
Here’s what I read this week:
This newsletter from author and podcaster Aminatou Sow, about the possibility of a coup happening right now in America. “It’s only a coup if it comes from the coup d'état region of France.” lol.
This newsletter about a ham party.
This positively perfect instagram post about how the Gilmore Girls characters would respond to the pandemic.
This cookie recipe, and this cookie recipe, and this cookie recipe.
My 2020 resolutions which included “cook through all of your own cookbooks” (which I mostly did since we all stayed home) and “find new ways to exercise” (which I definitely did not do).
Here’s a word, brought to you by the other half of LFLC:
Matt got home from work and told me he had a vocabulary word for today’s newsletter, and that word is avocation. It’s a noun, and its basically a fancy word for a hobby outside of your actual job.
A Christmas reminder:
With the USPS and small businesses struggling this year, it may be too late to snag that gift for your mom/cousin/cubicle neighbor, but it’s not too late for a gift card which you can now buy from bookshop.org. Bookshop.org supports locally owned, independent bookstores but at slightly discounted prices and literally (probably) a billion titles. So don’t guess! Just buy them a gift card and let them pick their own gift.
That’s everything! If you enjoyed this dispatch, please share it with a friend or follow us on social media at the buttons below. Every book I recommend can be found on this Goodreads shelf. If you want to chat, ask for book recommendations, or correct my punctuation, you can reply directly to this dispatch or leave a comment on substack, where you can also find an archive of every dispatch I release. Thank you for reading!