However, 2010 is still young, fresh and optimistic and this year I am going to be, if not more disciplined, at least more conscious of what I’m reading, in a zen kind of way.

To that end, I am joining The Story Siren’s 2010 Debut Authors Challenge, which means I promise to read at least 12 — if not more — MG or YA books published in 2010 by debut (see how this works?) authors. In the next post, I will make a Plan. Or if not a Plan, at least a plan. If you might be interested in playing along — and if nothing else, know that you’d be supporting new writers and filling their days with rainbows and their nights with mariachi bands — then check out the Siren’s posts here and here.

But that is not all! No, because if I’m in for a penny, I might as well be in for a pound and I think I will actually occasionally mention what I’m reading and whether I like it and why. See, a little while ago on the Upstart Crow Blog, Chris Richman asked what we had most enjoyed reading in 2009 — and it would have been really convenient if I had ever made any record of what I’d read rather than trying to dredge it up from the polluted crevices of my memory, which grows ever more unreliable as I soak it in ginger wine and rum.

On the other hand, I believe — as I always have — that we are in some way the sum total of our experiences and those experiences include the books we read.* In that sense, I have never lost a book because it has embedded itself in some small part of who I am. I am the walking library of my life.

*Including some we wish we hadn’t. For instance, if I could carve out the bit of my brain that read Running With Scissors, I would.