First, here is the "Books Received for Christmas" List: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, Personal Record: A Love Affair With Running by Rachel Toor, Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden & Stephen Bissette, The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff, Seeing Past Z by Beth Kephart, They Made Their Mark: An Illustrated History of the Society of Woman Geographers by Jane Eppinga, For the Birds: A Month-by-Month Guide to Attracting Birds to Your Backyard, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa by Peter Godwin, The Ice Finders: How a Poet, a Professor and a Politician Discovered the Ice Age by Edmund Blair Bolles, An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear, (More Maisie Dobbs!) A Universal History of the Destruction of Books From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq by Fernando Baez, Flights of Fancy by Peter Tate, Charles Darwin: The Concise Story of an Extraordinary Man by Tim Berra, The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska by Sherry Simpson (she was the head of my thesis committee in grad school - a great essayist), The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents,& Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations & a Variety of Helpful Indexes by Adam Thirlwell (whew!), The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell (Yea!) and Unpacking the Boxes by Donald Hall (which I am reading right now and thoroughly enjoying).

Oops - forgot Wolf Empire: An Intimate Portrait of a Species by Scott Ian Barry and my mother also got me a great book on the saints.

Yes, that was a mighty fine haul of books and I am such a sick person when it comes to books that I am decidedly delighted by each and every one of them even though I have stacks of books to read and review in the next few months anyway. (February column celebrates Darwin and other naturalists, March is all nonfiction on war and April is either fantasy or mystery - because after March's take on Iran, Iraq, Uganda, the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict and all over general war-ishness I think we all will need a fiction break A LOT).

I totaled my books read this year and came up with a paltry 146 which I think is because I wrote a book (it is still so weird to just casually say that) and ended up rereading lots of articles etc., while working on that. But 146 is still okay and there were lots of fabulous titles in there which leads me to the list of books I really enjoyed reading in 2008. (Stealing Jenny D.'s method of not linking because I'm just too tired to do it.) (And you should check out her list of books enjoyed this year because it is fabulous.)

Best YA/MG titles read in the past twelve months: I know we are internet friends (in that we have emailed but never met) but Jenny Davidson's The Explosionist remains one of the nicer surprises of the year. Jackie told me she found it very steampunk and while I agree it is certainly set in a steampunk world, I think that unlike most steampunk titles Explosionist relies far less on the trappings of setting then it does on plot, emotion and incredibly intense social analysis. A great book and, as Ed has already said, a title that works for teens and adults. Lonely Werewolf Girls by Martin Millar (werewolves and fashion and pizza and drug addiction and rock and roll and a ton of political intrigue. If you like Buffy you must read this book.) Steinbeck's Ghost by Lewis Buzbee (I have written about this one extensively and it is a great mystery/coming-of-age title. About as good as it gets for young teen readers.) Charles & Emma by Deborah Heiligman - the book on Darwin that I think will appeal as strongly to girls as boys and will utterly entrance anyone of any age who has wondered how his home life influenced his work. Empress of the World by Sara Ryan. Why don't more readers know about Sara Ryan? She nails teen angst and love and family drama in all the right ways. Her books read truer than most. White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages - because this story just gets better and Dewey and Suze are a pair of buddies/sisters that I can't take my eyes off of. (And it's about the late 1940s - no one writes about the atomic age for teens!)

And several other nonfic titles for teens: Emperors of the Ice by Richard Farr, about the Scott expedition, A Life in the Wild by Pamela S. Turner on George Schaller's amazing naturalist career (this will be reviewed in my February column - he's awesome and the book is wonderfully well written and designed) and Painting the Wild Frontier by Susanna Reich which brought painter George Catlin alive in the most wondrous way and made me wonder - yet again - just why I never learned about someone this interesting when I was in school. (It just would have been nice to stray from the obvious historic choices every now and again, you know?)

For adult books

Best Fiction: The Conjurer's Bird by Martin Davies which managed to make finding a lost bird way more riveting then you can imagine (much like Possession was about way more than poetry). The Seas and The Invention of Everything Else both by Samantha Hunt. One is about mermaids, but not and the other is about Nikola Tesla and time travel - and so much more. Hunt is an amazing writer; I was so glad to discover her this year. Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand. I did not like the protagonist but couldn't put the book down. I didn't think that was possible but it shows you what a good writer Hand is. The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett because I learn how to write from reading her and how to think, and how to feel. She is the definition of elegance. The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia in which a world is invented and many tales told and birds figure prominently and Russia opens up in all sorts of glorious ways for the reader.

Best Nonfiction: The Legend of Colton Bryant (will forever make me cry and scream at the same time), Dry Storeroom No 1 by Richard Fortey (I want to live in the British Museum of Natural History) The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming (A stunner of a graphic novel biography/memoir that I want to put in the hands of everyone I know with the slightest interest in history, art, magic or genealogy.) Pierre Loti by Lesley Blanch. He was too unreal to be real and she is the writer who wrote about Isabel Burton and I wish had written about Richard Burton as well (hell I wish she had written about everybody I'm interested in). History lovers or those entranced by the bios of well traveled people, take note. Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbott which is a graphic novel but also a history of the region Lewis Carroll came from (oops Charles Dodgson) and has all sorts of bits about Alice and not about Alice. You can hate Alice and love this book, promise. The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates 1973-1982 (Wherein I learn that I know nothing about writing. Wow.) Black Glasses Like Clark Kent by Terese Svoboda. A family secret that reveals the secrets of a nation and a war. Manhattan Memoir by Mary Cantwell which is the writer Rory Gilmore should have talked about because Cantwell is the definition of a woman's struggle between work and family in the 1940s and 50s and her story made my heart hurt, even though it was not bitter...it was just so honestly sad.

So lots of good books read and many more on the horizon. I also wrote a book and a ton of reviews and started (with the amazing Sarah Stevenson and a cast of talented reviewers second to none) Guys Lit Wire and we had the SBBT and WBBT and the super successful Blog the Vote event. Plus I went to the kidlitosphere conference in Portland on the train with Jackie and met Lee and Greg and Pam and and Jen and Lori Ann and Dia and Holly and Sarah (finally!) and many many other fabulous folks and that was all very good.

But now I need to think about next year. (This is the scary part.)

GLW is up and running and with the exception of needing a new poster (let me know if you're interested) it does not require nearly as much of my attention as it did in the beginning. I hope to spend 2009 focusing on spreading the word more about the site rather than daily concern over editing and scheduling and that sort of thing. I'm still going to write my column for Jessa as long as she will have me (and I hope she keeps me for a long long time) and I have a nice group of very talented reviewers at Eclectica Magazine so I'm able to spend more energy editing there as opposed to reviewing. (Not that reviewing is ever bad but it does take time away from other important things.)

Oh, and still love Booklist and still crazy proud to review for the ALA.

But writing. I need to do more writing. 2008 was not a bad writing year (I don't think it is ever bad when you get a book written in a year) but I'd like 2009 to be a better one. Part of the problem is that I'm tired of writing about Alaska. I've been writing about AK aviation, in one way or another, for one one venue or another, for TEN YEARS. (Actually if you count the time spent on my thesis and grad school papers it goes back a year or two more.) Every subject gets old after awhile and there is something else (one long something else and two short something elses) that I really really want to write about.

But they have to wait and that is just how it has to be.

So writing goals for 2009 include finishing the rewrite on the AK flying novel and then writing short stories one and two. That all needs to be done and complete by Spring - or I might very well lose my mind. (Actually the rewrite needs to be done by February but I think if I say that out loud it will scare the crap out of me.) The reward for getting these projects done is the glorious fun that will be returning to the YA novel (Winter Called Her Far Away) (It was a male pronoun before but now its female because that makes far more sense). There will be massive rewriting (like of the 30,000 already written words) but also lots of fabulous research that I am positively pining for.

Suffice to say, no Alaska and no aviation in that one. (But there is some Joan of Arc and WWI and RI and FL and the study of religion and maybe a reference or two to ice hockey.)

How far will I get on the new and improved Winter by the end of the year? I'd love to think the first draft will be done but it has been so long since I've written something completely new - something that I'm still forming in my mind - that I don't know how long it will take. It won't take years and years that I know for sure but eight months or a year or eighteen months? Not sure about that. I do know that by the end of 2009 I will know where the book is going and it will be well on its way there and I will feel good about it.

That's my biggest writerly goal for 2009 - feel good about the words. Publishing, getting any of it published, is something I've moved beyond. I have a great agent, she is doing a great job, and from here on out it is just me writing and the rest is for her to worry about. Next year is the writing and the reading for me and all the rest is for everyone else; the rest is not my worry; the rest is not as important as the writing.

I have a feeling it is going to be a really good year.

[Video from Wendy & Lisa and the wonderful movie Toys.]