52x52x52x52: The Reckoning

Lately I've been thinking about 2012 resolutions and how concrete goals have become less useful for me these days. Trying to develop NEW HABITS seems more productive and human than trying to achieve a list of arbitrary goals which may or may not be achievable, as projects change and grow and become something else.

Dad says the last new year's resolution he made was when he was 32 and it was the only one he was ever able to keep: He resolved to never make more resolutions.

However, setting the 52x52x52x52 goal (Quad 52s: 52 books, 52 movies, 52 blog posts, in 52 weeks) has kept me on point all year. There was even a moment when I thought I might reach 60 on all fronts.

For a while I thought that this goal was achieved without cutting into other time--that I had simply carved space from the leftover bits in my life. But I see now that is not the case. Next year I might make a similar goal, but it will be half as ambitious.

Here is a partial list of the books read this year, not including craft books (on writing, gardening, etc, which are technically books which were read cover to cover, and which add to the overall total, but which are not worth listing here):

1. Blood Meridian -- Cormac McCarthy

2. A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder -- Eric Abrahamson & David Freedman

3. In the House -- Lynn Kilpatrick

4. Zeitoun -- Dave Eggers

5. The Mezzanine -- Nicholson Baker

6. Everything You Know is Ping Pong -- Roger Bennett & Eli Horowitz

7. The Wasp Factory -- Iain Banks

8. The Financial Lives of the Poets -- Jess Walter

9. Gun With Occasional Music -- Jonathan Lethem

10. Shop Class As Soulcraft -- Matthew B. Crawford

11. The Lady and the Monk -- Pico Iyer

12. The Kite Runner -- Khaled Hosseini

13. Best Magazine Writing 2006 -- American Society of Magazine Editors

14. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout -- Lauren Redniss

15. Juliet, Naked -- Nick Hornby

16. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother -- Amy Chua

17. The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac -- Free Darko (Bethlehem Shoals, et al)

18. Freedom -- Jonathan Franzen

19. Manhood for Amateurs -- Michael Chabon

20. Robinson Crusoe -- Daniel Defoe

21. The Great American Stickup -- Robert Scheer

22. Buffalo Lockjaw -- Greg Ames

23. Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain

24. Where Good Ideas Come From -- Steven Johnson

25. The Big Short -- Michael Lewis

26. Lush Life -- Richard Price

27. Planet of Slums -- Mike Davis

28. The War of Art -- Steven Pressfield

29. Wuthering Heights -- Emily Bronte

30. The 25th Hour -- David Benioff

31. How We Decide -- Jonah Lehrer

32. Conquest of the Useless: Reflections on the Making of Fitzcarraldo -- Werner Herzog

33. Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America -- Steve Almond

34. How Soccer Explains the World -- Franklin Foer

35. Never Let Me Go -- Kazuo Ishiguro

36. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) -- Tom Vanderbilt

37. Jesus' Son -- Denis Johnson

38. Word Freak -- Stephan Fatsis

39. I Am Not Sidney Poiter -- Percival Everett

40. Do-Over -- Robin Hemley

41. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet -- David Mitchell

42. Wise Blood -- Flannery O'Connor

43. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks -- Rebecca Skloot

44. House of Holes -- Nicholson Baker

45. Oyster -- John Biguenet

46. Divisidero -- Michael Ondaatje

47. In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction

Others: McSweeney's Panorama Single-Issue Newspaper (like a book), Grow Great Grub, Small Claims Crap, Your Screenplay Sucks, Save the Cat, The First Five Pages, The Forest For the Trees, On Writing by Stephen King, Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, etc.