70. Cowboys Are My Weakness– Pam Houston
This was a recommendation by my writing friend, Kelly Hunt. I really liked these stories. They’re very outdoorsy and tough, even while the women in them are weak indeed. The women usually let men treat them pretty badly, which gets a bit old—it almost seems to date the stories, though, sadly such behavior seems to be timeless. I saved a long story for last (I was reading these over my lunch hour, and this long story seemed daunting) and then found it to be one of my favorites. “Dall.” Of course one of the reasons I loved this book was because a lot of the stories occur in Alaska or in other hardscrabble places, where these hardscrabble lives seem to fit.

71. Blue Shoes and Happiness– Alexander McCall Smith
I got a little bogged down in this one, although I ended up liking it just as well as any of the others. McCall Smith seems to like to throw a lot of extra story into his story. I guess that’s the voice of the narrator, Mma Ramotswe, doing the extra telling, the extra yarn.

When I was writing this last title down into the little journal where I keep my reading list (GEEK!) I suddenly noticed that I might even read more books this year than I did last year. Surprising. That was never the goal. The goal, if anyone is tracking this at home, was to read classics. You see how off my goal is from reality, right? I’d still like to get a few of those in before Jan. 1, but it’s more likely that I’ll keep turning to light fare to keep my brain from exploding until the first of the year. I have a book of my own to finish, for one thing.

But as far as not meeting my New Year’s resolutions, this one is a failure I can live with.