Once upon a time . . .

Once upon a time, there was a girl who never made New Year's resolutions . . . until now. Welcome! I'm Anna, and this year, I've resolved to start writing a blog. Finally! It's something I've wanted to do for years. I'm calling it Shelf Life because I spend most of my time prowling bookshelves, hunting for good, satisfying stories. This blog, like my own bookshelves, will address diverse, eclectic topics and hopefully lead you to discover some new favorite books of your own.

Now it's time for the all-important question: what have I been reading lately? As a busy college student, I haven't had a lot of time for "fun" reading (as opposed to required reading, which can be fun in its own way, but that's a post for another time.) However, I have had a lot of time to read over the Christmas break.

I began with revisiting some of my high school favorites (Piper Bank's Geek series; Ann Brashares's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), progressed to Kathryn Lasky's Wolves of the Beyond series, and finished vacation off with Charles Finch's A Death in the Small Hours, the latest installment in his Charles Lenox mystery series set in Victorian England. It's one of my favorites, and you'll hear all about it in time.

Thanks to my generous friends and family, I was able to conduct a successful post-Christmas raid on our local Barnes and Noble and came away loaded with enough steampunk fiction and science books to last me through March. Between those and the books I received as gifts and loans, I'm booked until Easter at least!

As far as I'm concerned, though, The Book of 2013 is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. You see, it's a most unusual year in that I made not one, but two New Year's resolutions: one is to write this blog, the other to read Les Miserables. As a singer, I'm in love with the musical--I've seen it live and went to the recent movie adaptation with my family on Christmas Day--but I've never read the book, so I decided that this is The Year to read The Book. I'll keep you updated on my progress, once I get ahold of a copy of The Book, that is!

Until next time,
Anna