It’s the
last week of December so, like all die-hard idealists, I’m thinking about New
Year’s resolutions. (I haven’t
actually made any – I’m only thinking about them.)
I could lose
weight… or I could start my taxes early… or I could clean out my sons’ closet…
One of the
problems with resolutions is that, after you’ve made several years’ worth, you
know that setting the bar too high pretty much guarantees failure. Which is no
fun. Another problem
is that most of us are even more serious and responsible with our resolutions
than we are with our To-Do lists, and if we are conscientious, we end up having
even less fun than we otherwise would. We watch our kids curl up with a book on
a snow day, and wish we could do the same. We look at Ken Follett’s latest epic, and tell ourselves we’ll wait until he finishes the trilogy. [He’s
finished.] We make lists of books to read ‘when we have time.’
Only we
never have extra time.
So maybe we
should flip New Year’s Resolutions around: make some willpower-required,
socially approved resolutions – maybe two or three – and then focus the rest on
fun.
The library
can help.
For
instance, if you have always wanted to learn more about music, we have lots of
DVDs and CDs and books.
Watch Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary. Catch up on musicals
you’ve missed. See the award winners before the awards ceremonies. Share your
favorites with your kids.
Music CDs? We have Billie Holiday, and Elvis, and the Rolling Stones.
Books? Recent titles on the New Nonfiction shelves include The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs, Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain, and U2: The Definitive Biography.
We have just
as many materials related to art, or hobbies, or travel.
Make a
reading resolution, for the fun of it. You can always set a goal you’re pretty
much guaranteed to meet. Commit to
half an hour a day, or fifteen minutes, or even five. Steal the time to read
from chores, or television, or social media. We have lots
of books to choose from: funny books and scary books, page-turners and classics,
books about weighty, important topics, and guilty pleasures.
Check
out this blog for new possibilities. Every week, three New Fiction titles will
be featured.
This week’s
titles are:
In
the summer of 1964, Ibby’s mother sends her, and the urn containing her
father’s ashes, to her grandmother’s New Orleans mansion, where she meets
Queenie, the cook, and Queenie’s daughter Dollbaby.
The title says it all. Read
the stories, then check out some of the movies they inspired: Captain Blood,
The Mark of Zorro, or The Adventures of Robin Hood.
When
a divorced London mother with three sons inherits a 300 year old mansion-turned-bed-and-breakfast,
she’s not sure she wants everything else that comes with it.
So come on
in, and check out something just for you. Because that closet can always wait
until the kid leaves for college. Or the kid can clean it. While you sit back
with a cup of coffee and a good book. Because who wants to wait to have fun?
