52 Books in 52 Weeks: Book List

In order to meet my New Years Resolution of reading 52 books in 52 weeks, here is my current book list. I'll keep adding to it, changing it, and marking off the books I've read over the course of 2015! There are far more than 52 on here, but I've always liked a challenge. I also happen to have FABULOUS friends and exceptionally smart coworkers who are more than willing to recommend a ton of books to me.

1. Brave New World (#1)
2. Catcher In The Rye (#2)
3. The Prisoner of Heaven (#4)
4. The Boys in the Boat***(#5)
5. Unbroken (#3) ***
6. In The Woods
7. The Chosen
8. The Killing
9. Villette
10. A Personal Matter
11. One Hundred Years of Solitude
12. 1984
13. A Scanner Darkly
14. The Fault in Our Stars
15. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
16. Everything I Never Told You
17. All the Light We Cannot See
18. Two Years Before The Mast (Dana)
19. Dune (Herbert)
20. Flowers for Algernon (Keyes)
21. The Riddlemaster of Hed (McKillip)
22. Wind, Sand and Stars (St. Exupery)
23. Paul Revere's Ride (Fischer)
24. Washington's Crossing (Fischer)
25. Burr (Vidal)
26. 26. The Far Pavilions (Kaye)
27. The Good Earth (Buck)
28. Shogun (Clavell)
29. Tales of the South Pacific (Michener)
30. The Source (Michener)
31. Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Bach)
32. Centennial (Michener)
33. To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
34. All the Kings Men (Warren)
35. Master and Commander (O'Brien)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Follet)
37. The Once and Future King (White - already read, but it's a favorite, so perhaps this is an extra!)
38. Roots (Haley)
39. The Three Musketeers (Dumas)
40. West with the Night (Markham)
41. All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)
42. Shiloh (Foote)
43. The Army of the Potomac (Catton)
44. The Gathering Storm (Churchill)
45. Six Frigates (Toll)
46. Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
47. Starship Troopers (Heinlein)
48. Don Quixote (Cervantes)
49. A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
50. The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
51. Lonesome Dove (McMurtry)
52. Seabiscuit (Hillenbrand)
53. Man O War (Farley)
54. King of the Wind (Henry)
55. Les Miserables (Hugo)
56. Tortilla Flats (Steinbeck)
57. Night (Weisel - I've read this but can't remember it)
58. Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury)
59. The Marian Chronicles (Bradbury)
60. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
61. Name of the Rose (Eco)
62. The Death of Manolete (Conrad)
63. The Black Arrow (Stevenson)
64. Kidnapped (Stevenson)
65. London (Rutherfurd)
66. The Fatal Shore (Hughes)
67. Undaunted Courage (Ambrose)
68. The Jungle Book (Kipling
69. Captains Courageous (Kipling)
70. Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
71. The Call of the Wild (London - have read, but ages ago)
72. White Fang (London)
73. Endurance (Shackleton - have read multiple accounts)
74. Alive (Read)
75. Into Thin Air (Krakauer)
76. The Last Kingdom (Cornwell; The Saxon Tales)
77. The Agony and the Ecstasy (Stone)
78. Last of the Mohicans (Hawthorne)
79. The Alienist (Carr)
80. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson - have read but ages ago)
81. Treasure Island (Stevenson)
82. A Thousand Splendid Suns (Hosseini)
83. From Beirut to Jerusalem (Friedman)
84. The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Friedman)
85. Clash of Civilizations (Huntington)
86. Great Power Politics (Mearsheimer)
87. The Paradox of American Power (Nye)
88. Freakonomics (Levitt)
89. Balkan Ghosts (Kaplan)
90. Guns, Germs and Steel (Diamond)
91. Salt (Kurlansky)
92. A History of the World in Six Glasses
93. Longitude (Sobel)
94. Nathaniel's Nutmeg (Milton)
95. Galileo's Daughter (Sobel)
96. Ghenghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Weatherford)
97. Journey into Fear (Ambler)
98. The Deep Blue Goodbye (MacDonald)
99. The Big Sleep (Chandler)
100. The Maltese Falcon (Hammett)
101. Isaac's Storm (Larsen)
102. Thunderstruck (Larsen)
103. Fate is the Hunger (Gann)
104. Angle of Attack (Gray)
105. Rocket Boys (Hickham)
106. The Prince (Machiavelli)
107. 1001 Nights
108. The Gnostic Gospels (Pagels)
109. Tarzan (Burroughs)
110. Conan (Howard - Berkeley edition in 3 volumes, Wagner Edit)

2015 Annual Resolution: No Nail Biting

Okay, so this is something teens probably resolve not to do. And I feel ridiculous as an adult typing out that I have an issue with biting my nails. It's not professional, it's not feminine, and plus I have a lot of awesome nail polish I'd like to actually wear. So there's that. 

But the deal is, I don't drink to excess, I don't have a lot of vices. But boy do I stress. And without even thinking about it, my nails are the first to go. I've tried this many, many times before and it works for a month or two. Then there's a nail snag, and I don't have a file with me. Or I weaken the nail by chomping on it. Gross. I know. So those months of hard work to grow my nails out (seriously, it takes so long to have nice, strong nails!) are gone in like 2 seconds flat once something goes wrong. This time, I really want it to stick. 

So here's one of my other goals. No nail biting. I've been successful thus far, but I mean it's only been like…4 days. But it's a start. 

Any tips? Suggestions? Other than "just do it, Christina. I mean, come on…"?

-Christina

2015 January Resolution: Organizing the Kitchen

I'm going to try to work on some annual resolutions, and then some more specific monthly resolutions. This is more to curb my procrastinatory nature than anything else, and if by some miraculous way I develop some readers, at least some sort of external accountability. At the very least, typing it out helps me organize my thoughts on what needs to happen. 

So why the kitchen first? It's my most-used place in the house and could really use some love. My pots and pans are in disarray (I know where they all are, of course, but it's embarrassing when the SO - a total neat freak - comes over!), I don't have a real silverware tray, my spice cabinet is a shambles (I just have so many!), and my cupboard is a disaster. Okay, so I make it sound like a third-world country in there, but it's just so counter to what I want it to be. I want a magazine kitchen, but a magazine kitchen that actually gets used. Things should be in their functional places - it shouldn't be a struggle to pull what I need out of a cabinet, risking an avalanche each time. So, this is January's plan. 

Cupboard: 

• Arrange Christmas/Holiday storage appropriately
• NO items allowed on the floor except the dog food bucket and the trash can when it's stored
• Get rid of unused vacuum
• Go through all dry goods. If it hasn't been used, toss it. 
• Arrange and organize non-perishables/dry goods
• NO "miscellaneous" buckets/piles/plastic bags

Spice Cabinet:

• Paint/Label spice jars; all spices must go in here unless it's too large of a quantity; extra spices go on top shelf
• Buy large spice tiered tray
• Put all baking materials in here, too (see Cupboard above)

Kitchen Counters:

• Minimal clutter allowed. Coffee Pot & Coffee Dish, Paper Towels, Cuisinart, Knife Block & Cutting Boards
• Do a thorough clean of counters, sink, and oven dishes.

Kitchen Drawers/Cabinets:

• Swap drawers around so they make logical sense. Misc. drawer by coffee pot, 
• Get a freaking utensil tray already! Jeez!
• Move Crock Pots to the left; useful pots to the right. Declutter "miscellaneous" cabinet under coffee pot.
• Declutter under-sink cabinet. ALL cleaning supplies should go here.

Fridge:

• NO items allowed on top of the fridge. Period. Ever.

So, this is daunting. But I'm doing it. There's no excuse, for as much as I cook, to have a disorganized work space. No excuses. Just do it.

-Christina

2015 Annual Resolution: 52 Books in 52 Weeks

The best resolutions for me are the ones that are ones that I truly want. Desire. That's how I can get myself to actually do them.

Sure, I'd love to be toned, but do I desire to spend more time in the gym? Eh. I'd love to be better at what I eat all the time. To give up Five Guys or Chik-Fil-A when the mood strikes. But that's not so much a desire - and those things won't make me a better person. Sure I will have some resolutions for those too, but this one is my primary this year. Now that grad school is finished and I have some time to read things that are outside of the realm of project management, I decided that of my two biggest passions, cooking and reading, reading has fallen by the wayside. 

I've always had a varied vocabulary, but I picked up Brave New World the other night and found myself googling for definitions a couple of times. Have I really grown that rusty? I guess so - since I can't really remember the last new book I picked up. What a horrifying revelation. 

That spurred me into this challenge for myself. 52 books in 52 weeks. That can be either one book a week, can include "sometimes" books that will take me all year to read, or can be a mixture. Every so often I'll post how I'm doing, likely an end-of-month summary, what books I've liked the best, etc. I'll be tracking them in the meantime through www.goodreads.com.  This is my resolution for the year. 

If you have any suggestions for books, feel free to make them! I'm sort of just going along as I think of them or get suggestions! 

Happy Reading!

Christina