HAPPY NEW YEAR! After some fussing and moving things around, here it is, my to-read list for 2014. (You can find this list, add the books to your own shelves, and watch my progress through the year at my shelf on Goodreads). Commentary follows.

1. 179 Ways to Save a Novel: Matters of Vital Concern to Fiction Writers by Peter Selgin
2. A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty** Someone Else’s Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson
3. Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1) by Jamie McGuire
4. Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, The Bad, and the Scary by Jill Smokler
5. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Shopaholic, #1) by Sophie Kinsella [done]
6. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
7. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
8. Divergent (Divergent, #1) by Veronica Roth
9. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
10. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garci Marquez
11. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
12. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
13. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
14. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
15. On Writing by Stephen King
16. Pieces of the Heart by Karen White
17. Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making by John Fox
18. Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon
19. Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World by Kristen Lamb
20. Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
21. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
22. Strange Brew by Mary Kay Andrews
23. The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are by Danny Gregory
24. The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman
25. The Five Destinies of Carlos Moreno by George Weinstein
26. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
27. The Reading Group: A Novel  by Elizabeth Noble
28. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
29. The Violets of March by Sarah Jio
30. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
31. Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner
32. Voyager (Outlander, #3) by Diana Gabaldon [done]
33. Writing from Life by Susan Wittig Albert
34. Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
35. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
36. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott [omitted in original post]

Whew! You can see that this is quite a list with a lot of variety, which is how I like to read. It’s pretty ambitious, especially for a slow reader like me (and P.S. I’ll be writing at least one book this year myself). When I look at this list, I’m torn between how many things are missing and how overwhelming the list already is. There are a few mitigating factors for the overwhelm, at least. First, I’m including audiobooks that I will listen to in the car and while cleaning house, both Voyager and Strange Brew are already in my audible library (along with MKA’s Ladies’ Night, which I’m listening to currently but started in 2013). There are a few re-reads of old classics I haven’t read in several years: The Sound and the Fury, Mrs. Dalloway, Man’s Search for Meaning, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Stephen King’s On Writing.

The list is heavy on Women’s Fiction (duh), and I’ve included some quintessential chick-lit by Sophie Kinsella and New Adult fiction by Jamie McGuire, as well. I’m trying to deepen my understanding of genre this year. I also started out with a goal to read one non-fiction book for writers each month, and if you count Viktor Frankl, I’ll come close with eleven. Everything else is a mish-mash of recommendations from friends, comic relief, parenting stuff, and last but definitely not least, The Five Destinies of Carlos Moreno written by my friend George. All the books on craft and working left less room for fiction than I would like, but that’s an occupational hazard. It will be interesting to see if that pushes me to read faster so I can finish the list and add more fun books.

So what do you think? Do you have your own list of books to read this year? Any books in common with my list? What recommendations would you make for 2015 based on what I have listed here? I love reading your comments!

Enjoy good reading in 2014!

Edit to add: I thought it was worth mentioning that a few days after I posted this list, best-selling author Kristen Lamb posted this amazing blog, The Writer’s Guide to a Meaningful Reference Library. Writer friends, please check it out for yourself because it’s great. I’m happy that I’ve read about half of those Kristen lists, and maybe I will sneak a couple more onto my list for this year. I’ll keep you posted.

**Changed to Someone Else’s Love Story in February because my whole town is reading it this year!

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I’m M.J. (Manda) Pullen, an author and mom in the Atlanta, Georgia area. I blog with humor and honesty about writing, publishing, parenthood, life in general and the many lessons I’ve learned the hard way. If you enjoy reading this blog, please sign up for the RSS or sign up for my monthly updates here (and enter the monthly giveaway). Thanks for reading, commenting and sharing!

MJ Pullen

M.J. Pullen is a distracted writer and the mom of two boys in Roswell, Georgia, where she is absolutely late for something important right now. Her books include quirky romantic comedies and playful women's fiction. She blogs erratically with writing advice, random observations, and reflections on raising very loud kids and dogs. Join her Distracted Readers newsletter list for updates, free content, giveaways and more.