I played with the same sort of resolutions the past few years and it always looks liks this:
- spend more time with closed friends
- talk more to the family
- read more
- go back to writing
- more sport
I've tried to be more specific in 2019 and pretty much succeeded in 4 out of these 5 points. Yep, you could easily guess it by looking at the publishing dates on this blog, I haven't written for a while but hey, it's not what I want to talk about this time.
One thing I've nailed down is my reading habit. I told myself last year to read at least 1 book a month [total being 12 at the end of the year - yep I know, I'm good at maths indeed]. I finally read 21 books in total. It made me very happy so I decided to read at least 2 books a month in 2020 [spoiler: I'm heavily on track].
Below's the list [from the first one I read to the last]:
- Papa pour la premiere fois [fr]
- J'accouche bientot: que faire de la douleur? [fr]
- Les gens heureux lisent et boivent du cafe [fr]
- Le journal de moi... papa [fr]
- Men, Love & Birth [en]
- Revenir a Lisbonne [fr]
- Barbarian Days: a surfing life [en]
- Ce qu'il reste de nos reves [fr]
- L'ecologie en bas de chez moi [fr]
- Une colere noire: Lettre a mon fils [fr]
- Petite Poucette [fr]
- L'alchimiste [fr]
- L'espionne [fr]
- Le tour du monde du roi Zibeline [fr]
- Check-point [fr]
- L'aventure, le choix d'une vie [fr]
- Le rugissant [fr]
- Hotel International [fr]
- Le grand roman des maths [fr]
- Montessori a la maison [fr]
- Electrochoc [fr]
Yep there is something funny indeed looking at this list: 5 books are related to birth & parenthood. Quite easy to guess what we went through last year haha. I also realise that I actually read a lot in french - only 2 books were in english - way more than I would have thought first [and this is probably due to the fact I read in english mainly everyday on the web]. 6 books are novels, which isn't bad for someone who never read this type initially [this is changing though]. My family always makes fun of me because they think I only read biographies but this represents only 5 books last year. There is actually one main topic included in most of these titles [parenthood aside]: travel. It's in 10 of these books [including the highest grade I gave]. 2 books are related to music.
I use a french website called SensCritique to keep track of what I read and rate everything [out of 10]. Average of these 21 books is 6.33. I gave two 9/10: J'accouche bientot & Le tour du monde du roi Zibeline. And I gave two 2/10: Papa pour la premiere fois & Le journal de moi... papa. I'm really disappointed so far in everything written for dads anyway. It's like the only angle for men if you want to tackle parenthood somehow is to treat them like dummies. I've no doubt there are great stuff out there but I still have to dig.
So, my top 3 recommendations from last year would be [parenthood aside of course]: (1) Le tour du monde du roi Zibeline (2) L'alchimiste (3) Le grand roman des maths.
Enjoy.