Maius Intra Qua Extra

Looking at my New Year post for 2025, I see that my plans were (1) plant a garden, and (2) compost. (1) I achieved in a small way: I planted herbs, I ate fresh herbs, I planned my guest meals around being able to airily comment “I need some chives” purely in order to waltz out onto the patio and clip the chives fresh. (However, the non-herb parts of the garden grew outside of my control, and I must do a better job with them in 2026.)

I was stymied in (2) by the small size of my yard and the voracity of the local wildlife, who enthusiastically dug up anything I buried to compost. However, a friend has started to compost, so I save my compost things in the freezer and bring them along to add to the heap whenever I visit, so at least it’s all getting composted eventually.

The New Year’s Resolution I actually kept was one I stole from genarti later in January, to read one book from my physical To-Read shelf each month. I achieved this! A couple of months I even read two! One month I DNF’ed the book, but upon consultation with genarti we agreed that, as this also achieves the ultimate goal of removing the book from the Unread Book Club, it still counts.

I also managed to keep pace with any new book purchases as they came in, meaning that the number of books in the Unread Book Club is in fact smaller. So I’ll be continuing with this resolution. At the present rate, I should empty the To-Read shelf in 2027. Naturally I will celebrate with a trip to John K. King Books and return with a massive pile of books with which to restart the Unread Book Club.

Otherwise, my goal for this year is not to start any new reading projects. Read at whim! I do want to continue the Book Log Challenge, because it is a good way to remind myself of authors I’ve been meaning to read more books by… but it often happens that I’ll be reaching the end of a particular list and really just don’t feel like reading anything by the last author or two.

That is fine! I can simply decide to strike that author and move on! The list is an aide-memoire, not a binding document. Maybe I should change the tag to Book Log Frolic rather than Book Log Challenge.

…Having said this, I was all set to strike Project Hail Mary because I keep looking at the book and going “Naaaah don’t feel like it,” but then rachelmanija posted it was one of her favorite books of the year, so… Okay, I have to at least pick it up. Give it twenty pages or so to grab me. That seems only fair, right?