Yosemite Bound

Ansel Adams, Yosemite Park, 1942

We're off to the most beautiful and holy place in the country. We've been many times to Yosemite in the summer but never in the winter and look forward to a cozy week with friends. It's the first time The Husband and I, as well as all three kids, have gone on a vacation together in years! Sophie is coming along, and our only worry is how the altitude will affect her. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for only sleepiness!

In lieu of daily blog updates, I'll be posting mini reviews of my top five book picks of 2012, in no particular order. The books I read this year are posted on the sidebar to the right and below and don't include the magnificent essays and writing I've read on your blogs as well as the poetry that I grab when I run to the hills. And if I know you -- from blog-land or otherwise, and I read your book this year, I'm not going to include it in my top five or review it!

See you in 2013, and Happy New Year to each of your beloved selves!

The books I read in 2013 

• Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
• How to Think More About Sex by Alain De Botton
• The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
• One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• The Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen
• Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel by Maria Semple
• Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
• The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
• Too Good To Be True by Benjamin Anastas
• Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
• The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen
• The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evision
• In One Person by John Irving
• The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks
• How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
• The Receptionist by Janet Groth
• Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
• There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From by Bryan Charles
• Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar by Michelle O'Neill
• By the Iowa Sea: A Memoir of Disaster and Love by Joe Blair
• Canada by Richard Ford
• The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn
• Modigliani: Man and Myth by Jeanne Modigliani
• Use Your Words by Kate Hopper
• Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers
• The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot
• Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn
• Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeannette Winterson
• Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson
• Because of Katie by Karen Gerstenberger
• The Guardians by Sarah Manguso
• Restoration by Olaf Olafsson
• The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
• Life Sentences by William H. Gass
• Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian
• The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
• Love and Shame and Love by Peter Orner