so before i had cricket, i had resigned myself to the fact that i would spend the next few years of my life without getting lost in books. i had heard, "i used to read, but then i had kids, and you know, you really can't anymore," so many times that i had accepted it as absolute truth. but then i had him and learned something about myself. i learned that a lot of the time, i will choose books over tv. i will choose books over movies. i will choose books over sleep. i will choose books over music (i went from music in the car to audiobooks. it's awesome.) it may take me longer to get through books, i may have to put it down way more often than i like, but i still pick then back up again (most of the time). i had kids, and i did not give up my stories.

so, without further ado, here's a post about my 2015 books. when i realized i was still reading, my goal was to read 15 books. i surpassed that, obviously.

my list of books that i read this year (mostly in the order that i read them in):
bold: favorites of the year
italics: this was a bad book and i read it so that you don't have to
*: disappointing (this doesn't necessarily mean that it was bad)
anything linked goes to my review of the book on goodreads

1. Pwned by Matt Vancil
2. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline *
3. Dragon Run by Patrick Matthews
4. Hey Natalie Jean by Natalie Holbrook *
5. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
6. Six Moon Summer by SM Reine
7. All Hallows' Moon by SM Reine
8. Long Night Moon by SM Reine
9. Gray Moon Rising by SM Reine
10. Falling for Hamlet by Michelle Ray
11. Emma and Elsie Meet Fitzwilliam Darcy by Maddy Raven and Monica Leonelle *
12. The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima
13. The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima
14. The Gray Wolf Throne by Cinda Williams Chima
15. The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling (reread)
17. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling (reread)
18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (reread) 
19. Home by Clementine von Radics
20. Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine von Radics
21. Healing Old Wounds with New Stitches by Meggie Royer
22. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (audiobook) (reread)
23. Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night by Tui T. Sutherland
24. The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart (audiobook)
25. Love, Rosie by Celia Ahern
26. The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet by Katie Rorick
27. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
28. Rebel Angels by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
29. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
30. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
31. Deception Point by Dan Brown (audiobook)
32. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
33. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (reread)
34. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (reread)
35. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephenie Perkins *
36. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
37. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
38. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
39. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl *
40. Dramarama by E. Lockhart (audiobook) *
41. Stargirl by Jerry Spineli (audiobook)

and i started but have yet to finish:

1. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
2. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray *
3. Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry by Albert J Bernstein

stats (only counting the completed books):

75.6% of the books read were YA or middle-grade books (this year i'm thinking of reading for my age group more)

7% were poetry 

29% were rereads

80% of my favorite books of the year were rereads

43.9% were standalone books

notes:

i feel like i have to talk about the seven realms series (the chima books). i had so many issues with the writing and the consistency and the wasted potential of the characters and the predictability and just so many things, but it took me almost all summer to get through them because i was traveling and mothering and stuff, and by the time i was ending the series, i was legit sad. after spending so much time with these characters, i had fallen in love with them. i read the books on the kindle app on my phone, but i feel like they now deserve a place on my shelves. i just can't bring myself to buy the series again when there wasn't much difference in price between the ebooks and hard copies. anyway, i wasn't sure if i should bold it or not because i did love them, but i also really didn't. 

isla was another one that i was on the fence about. i remember being over a third of the way into the book and thinking "there is no tension!" (which was actually very helpful because that's always been a problem for me (starting the book too soon) and i never really knew how to fix it but seeing it in someone else's work was a very a-ha moment) and then when the "tension" hit i couldn't get over how contrived and stupid the problem was. but i still liked it? i dunno. i reread the rest of the series to see if that changed anything, but it actually did more damage than good because it made me see how problematic things in the other books were, and those were my go-to fluff in times of stress and now they're ruined. sigh. 

overall, though the titles are every bit as embarrassing as usual (and by that i mean you should all wish to have my taste in books), i'm actually pretty proud of the number of books i managed to get through. honestly, it would have been more if i didn't drag out the bad books because i refused to just put them down but couldn't seem to pick them up either. next year i'm hoping to branch out a bit. i'm also planning on getting through the books that i keep buying but not reading. my to-be-read list is getting a bit ridiculous. i think those two hopes may be contradictory. 

there's another world we're living in tonight

[one] you guys, i want to live in the wizarding world of harry potter. i really do. it was so well designed and executed and just perfect in every single way. it's been a few weeks since i've been back home, and i still feel like i should just quit my life and go back. the "london" side is perfect. like, it seriously looks like a street pulled straight out of london, and then you go into diagon alley and it's like you're home. (if you, like me, have always felt more at home in fictional worlds than this real one i'm stuck in.) fire breathing dragons, people running around with wands performing spells that actually work, sipping butterbeer. i sat in the sun eating a scoop of florean fortescue's ice cream while listening to celestina warbeck perform live, and i cannot even explain how perfect that moment was. i would move to orlando in a heartbeat, get an annual pass, and spend every minute in diagon alley if it didn't mean that i had to live in florida. no offense to floridians, but the news stories that come out of that state have me noping big time. plus, too many bugs. but sigh, take me back.

[two] it's almost nanowrimo time again! i was, as is typical of me in octobers, wondering if i should even do it this year. i have a baby that wants me to spend my days building towers for him to knock down. i have a dissertation that i need to write slash start from scratch with slash cry about in the bathroom. i have a severely neglected blog that i never seem to have time to update. and yet, i think i can write a fifty thousand word novel? am i crazy? apparently. i usually have some hint of a plot idea or a character or a feeling that could be turned into something by the beginning of october. this year? nothing. at first i took that as a sign to take a break from it, but then i got on the site, looked at titles in the adoption station, and started to get the excitement in the pit of my stomach that means creativity is near. i didn't see any titles that jumped out at me and filled my head with a story, but just looking through them started to get my brain turning, and now there is a feeling starting to bubble up that i might be able to turn into something. and it feels almost as perfect as being back in diagon alley. if i could spend my days writing in a fictional world on the beach, i think i'd die of happiness.

[three] baby update! cricket is seven months now. which means that it has been over half a year since he's been around and that is just ridiculously crazy to me. he's eating solids and crawling (sort of. he does some weird version of the worm across the floor.) and sitting up and knocking down towers and jumping and just basically being not a newborn anymore. it's mindblowing to me though it really shouldn't be, this is what babies do, they grow up. but goodness this is fast, having a baby around again brought light to the fact that i know waaay too many kid songs and if i used that brain power to remember something more productive i could probably be some sort of academic genius at this point with three post-graduate degrees, a hundred published articles, and seven schools begging me to work for them. instead i just have a vague sense of guilt and frustration and a much edited outline for a new dissertation topic. oh well.

*Here With Me - The Killers

and it hits you so much harder than you thought

don't you hate it when you try to write a blog post but can't get yourself to because you're way too emotional about the topic, but then you can't write anything else because this post is completely blocking the way, so you decide to take a few days away from blogland altogether, but then life happens and you end up leaving the country for a month without a computer, and suddenly it's three months later and you still haven't written anything? just me? well, okay then.

bear with me for one more early days of motherhood post because obviously if i don't write this i will never write anything ever again. it has to do with breastfeeding so if that's an issue for you then maybe you should stop reading and go do some soul-searching about why you feel the need to be an insufferable drama bomb.

the absolute hardest thing i have had to do so far as a mother (and yes this is counting up to today, two days shy of cricket turning five months) was not breastfeeding my baby. it is something i don't think i will ever get over ever for as long as i live. i mean, cricket is turning five months old on wednesday. he is happy and healthy and thriving. he is gaining weight and getting tall and just recently learned to roll over completely. (he got stuck on the back to stomach part for a while.) i know that i am being the best mom i can be for him. and yet, just writing the word breastfeeding has a lump forming in my throat and tears pricking behind my eyes. it should not still be this hard for me, but it is.

i don't think i ever wanted anything as badly as i wanted to breastfeed my kid. but i couldn't. because my body is stupid and failed at the one thing that it was made to do. while i was pregnant, i was preparing for this to be hard. i had heard the horror stories of the early days and was ready to face them. i never got that chance. i simply didn't produce enough milk. i started to supplement with formula after the first week. cricket had lost too much weight and was getting lethargic. my husband had to feed him that first bottle in another room, and i spent the whole night sobbing in my bed.

i tried everything to get my supply up. i took fenugreek until i smelled like a maple syrup factory. i drank mother's milk tea and gatorade and water like i was stranded in a desert. i ate oatmeal and flaxseed and brewers yeast all day long. i ate everything that arabs say up your supply as well. i spent days in bed just doing skin-to-skin and nursing. i power-pumped. i tried every single thing that anyone anywhere said had helped them. i tried my best to not stress about it (which is really, really hard let me tell you. there were many, many tears cried.). and sometimes it seemed to be working. sometimes he wouldn't want formula after a feeding. sometimes i was able to pump more than half an ounce. but those times were few and far between. and it seemed like every day my measly supply kept dropping and dropping. eventually, when he was probably at 95% formula anyway, i gave up. and then cried about it for three days. (i'm pretty sure that everyone was pretty relieved at this point because they were all sick of my nonstop crying and thought that stopping might help that.)

i have never tried so hard to do anything before in my life, and failing crushed me. but i had a baby to take care of, so i took a deep breath and locked the feelings away in a chest in the back of my mind to deal with later. and i ostensibly moved on. or, i tried to. my family knew not to even mention the word around me or i would completely break down, but no one else got the memo. why had i never noticed that it was a thing to ask people how they fed their child? because it is apparently a thing. every single person who saw the baby, even people who i was not especially close to and people whose asking was completely awkward, everyone's first question after "how old is he" was "do you breastfeed?" and every single time i said no i felt the walls i built around the chest in the back of my mind start to crack. and i changed the topic quickly or tuned out if a group started talking about it because i knew if i didn't i would dissolve into a crying mess again. and who knows if i would have been able to pull myself out of it a second time? of course they didn't know that they were killing me, rubbing salt into a wound that i was trying to pretend wasn't still raw. to them, it was an innocent question. to me, it was a knife to the heart.

i cannot tell you how relieved i was when i saw everyone there was to see. when i had admitted to all of them as offhandedly as i possibly could, that i had failed. i had failed, i had failed, i had failed. and it got easier and easier to ignore the chest at the back of my mind. some days i forgot about it completely. there was much to distract me.

until the summer. it took me longer than it should have to realize why i was so resentful of my [extended] family this summer. why just seeing my uncles and aunts put me in a bad mood. it was the fact that they all just assumed i was breastfeeding, the way they would hand me my baby and say "you can nurse him in my room if you're more comfortable." once again, a case of people not realizing that their innocent trying to be niceness ruined my day.

i think what really kills me is that deep down, i know that i did not actually try my hardest. i decided not to stick to the super rigid pumping schedule once i switched to formula. i decided not to take any prescription medicines. i decide to give up. because i know myself. and i know that i was one step away from becoming truly obsessive. because that is what i do. i get obsessive to an unhealthy level, and i try to stop myself from reaching that point. so i stopped. i stopped because i wanted to actually enjoy my first baby, and if i didn't, i wouldn't. but that means that i am left with an eternal what if. and that is the worst.

i realize that i had the luxury to be destroyed by this because i was able to get pregnant, to have a healthy baby, things that other people can't. does that make it any easier for me? not really, and that's okay. i've never been one to believe that your pain doesn't hurt because someone else has more. but the fact that i can look at this with some perspective means progress. and while i'm definitely not ready to open the chest just yet, maybe i can let the walls crumble a bit. soon i might unlock it. and while this may not be the healthiest way to deal with it, it's the way i'm dealing with it.

*Soul - Matchbox 20

okay so blogging is hard with a baby. more specifically, blogging my usual rambling posts is practically impossible. here is how all of my attempts at blogging have gone so far:

1. baby falls asleep
2. tensely wait for fifteen minutes to see if he's really asleep or just trying to drive me crazy
3. go wash and boil bottles
4. search the house for dirty diapers and take them all out to the house
5. do a load of laundry
6. shove handfuls of cereal in my mouth while gulping down some water and going to pee
7. check my email/grade papers/do whatever computer stuff i need to do for job/scholarship/whatever else
8. decide to write a blog post
9. start said blogpost
10. get halfway through
11. hear the baby start crying and stop writing

after a couple of days i'll go back to finish the post, realize that it is completely irrelevant by that point, start a new post, stop halfway through. rinse and repeat. 

when i sat down to the computer today to try and figure out why exactly my husband was saying that our summer flight reservations had disappeared (it turns out to be because our summer flight reservations had disappeared which means another frustratingly long and pointless thing to get sorted fun.) (side note: do any of you realize how awful it is to get an infant a passport? it's worse than waiting at the dmv. seriously. whoever thought it would be a good idea to have an infant wait five plus hours in a crowded, stuffy room off of the post office was either really stupid or really sadistic.), i realized how much i had missed typing. i never thought i would miss typing until my fingers were clacking away at the letters after too long. 

the past few days cricket has been going through a wonder week which means he is fussier than usual and has forgotten how to sleep. i either have to deal with an overtired baby or sit and rock him in the rocking chair for hours so he'll stay mostly asleep. at first i was like, this is not so bad. i can just sit here and read books on the kindle app on my phone. a couple days of that, though, and i am cramped and restless and all i want to do is wash clothes or make the bed or boil bottles without a crying baby with me. i am going stir crazy and cannot wait for this to be over. of course, then cricket goes and does something like laugh in his sleep and reminds me why it's all worth it, but still. i just want an hour for me. i am exhausted from doing nothing. i didn't even think that was possible. 

there's so much you have to know

my life pre-cricket involved a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen and wandering the internet. office hours, "study" hours, and those random in-between times when it's too early to leave the house yet but too late to do anything productive were all spent at a laptop. and because of that, i was pretty on top of everything that was going on from international big news stories to the latest tabloid news, from personal stories about friends i had never actually met in real life to stories about the fictional people that i felt i had known forever.

my life post-cricket, at least so far, has involved a significantly less amount of computer time. while there have still been hours staring at a screen, the screen usually has netflix on it. (anything that needs my hands to type or scroll just was not feasible at the time.) the times that i do have access to my hands, i am usually found googling baby-related stuff or playing candy crush. most of the time, though (and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to end this sentence. the past six weeks are just a hazy blur of feeding and rocking and changing clothes and diapers and sheets interspersed with interrupted sleep and i have no idea what i have been doing "most of the time," but i feel like i have been wildly productive and one hundred percent unproductive at the same time. on the one hand, hello, keeping a baby alive here, but on the other hand, what have i been doing with the past six weeks?)

this is all to say that, as i've been coming out of my first-six-weeks-of-motherhood daze (which is totally a thing), i find myself saying over and over and over again, "wait, what?! when did that happen?" things like zayn malik leaving one direction and that plastic surgeon that was parodied in the unbreakable kimmy schmidt committing suicide were thrown casually into conversations like of course everyone knows about this, what rock have you been living under? i didn't know about the bombings in yemen until a few days into them. and for the first year in as long as i can remember, i missed every single website's april fool's day prank.

i'm not sure i have ever been so uninformed about everything. starting from today, and until i feel like i have caught up as much as i can, i will start every conversation i have with people with "so what was your favorite piece of news/information from march/april?" feel free to catch me up in the comments.

*Father and Son - Cat Stevens