With the ever increasingly stressful (and quite frankly, unnecessary) holiday season finally over, we can all now look forward to 2008.  “Go with the flow and pay as you go” is my annoying little motto for the year.  It’s a mantra I can repeat internally to remind myself to relax more.

I’m not much for the traditional resolutions (or “to do” lists) but here’s a quick rundown of what I plan to accomplish in this new year besides the ever present desire to travel more:

1.  Finish the 1st draft of my next novel.  I’m about 2/3 of the way there after starting in May of 2007.  What I do with it after that is anyone’s guess.

2.  Lay down the dough for that Rosetta Stone software so I can become fluent in French (finally).

3.  Buy a digital camera and perhaps take a photography class.

4.  Vote in November.  Dubya’s days are numbered.  Let’s not screw this one up like we did the last two presidential elections.

Here’s the list of books I plan to read in the early months of 2008 as winter is a great time to get lost in some heavy literature.  Hopefully these classics will wipe away the bad taste left in my mouth from Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker, which is a book so mind numbingly awful I don’t even know how to describe it.  Mister B. Gone is the type of “curiosity” I was forced to read to pass the time in the wake of the writers’ strike and no late night talk shows.  So thank you Letterman and Conan for returning this week so I can fall asleep laughing again!  Oddly, though, I was glad to have read it, because sometimes you have to read the garbage to appreciate the classics more and to know what to avoid in your own writing.  There’s nothing like gaining a little perspective.

TO READ THIS WINTER: 

Dubliners by James Joyce (his short story collection)

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway