A New Year

So on the New Year theme, I thought I'd make up a list of goals. Not resolutions, mind, just goals. So here we go:

• Read thirty books (not hard, if you know me at all)
• finish working on Nor and start another novel
• three to five short stories
• spend more time outside
• treat my body better
• make music more consistently
  

I think that's a good list, don't you? Not too much, not too little. What about you all? Any brilliant things on your horizons sparked off by New Year?
On to other topics . . . my holiday trip was quite good, overall, with the major exception of what I discussed in my previous entry here. I saw my godchildren, saw my whole immediate family, spent some time with my partner-in-crime's parents, and saw some of my friends. Not enough of them and not for long enough, but that's the way it goes on these trips. Of course, having my flights messed up in both directions wasn't great, but I seem to have bad luck with holiday travel, so oh well. It was a pretty good Christmas. I even saw what-if boy on my last night; we watched a movie together, and then slept next to each other, as chaste as brother and sister.
In regard to my goals for this year, I've already read two books. The first was Greywalker, by Kat Richardson. I love good, dark urban fantasy! This one is about a woman named Harper who has a near-death experience and afterward sees the world differently. Literally. She can now see a place called the Grey, which is a sort of limbo between our world and the otherworld. Which means, of course, that her life immediately gets complicated through the presence of vampires, witches, and ghosts, none of which she believed in before. This book was dark, and gritty, and the interactions between the characters was natural and believable. Beyond that, Harper's transition from total disbelief to accepting the change in her was also believable. And it's the first book in a series, which means I have several more stories about Harper to enjoy!
The second book is called Freaks, by Annette Curtis Klause. It's about a boy born and raised among circus performers who are physically different in all sorts of ways. Eventually he feels too normal for his extended circus family and sets off to seek his fortune on his own. It's a really fun read; there's some good teenage angst, and a great love story between Abel (main character) and a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian mummy, and some great secondary characters (particularly a gaggle of children Abel saves from an evil circus man named Dr. Mink). I really enjoyed this book, but still, somehow, I'm not sure that it's a keeper. It just didn't catch me as much as some books do.
Anyway. Twelve minutes left of the workday, so I should probably wrap things up before it's time to go. I also need to pick a new book to read, since I finished Freaks on the train this morning, and that always takes a few minutes!