Bleak December, the last month of the year has arrived. With all the hustle and bustle, there are so many things to wrap up. My reading goal is one.
This year started looking like a normal year. I set a goal of 72 books. Then disaster arrived.
My Goats
My ten-year-old buck, High Reaches Silk’s Augustus, got sick. It was terminal and I had to say good-bye. His pen looked so forlorn.
Dairy goats must have kids to continue to give milk. Terrill Creek Huckleberry came home. He was a love, just a wonderful buck. Somewhere he found and ate something poisonous and died.
Then my beloved Agate got sick. No matter what I did, she kept getting worse. When she finally collapsed, unable to stand, I had to say good-bye to her too.
My Family
My goats are my family. They have been my companions through several moves and over fifty years. All of them are special. Three have been extra special: Jennifer, my first goat; Bridget, my traveling companion; and Agate, my bottle baby.
Reading and writing almost ceased for months. That leaves me now, in December, seventeen books away from my set goal.
Making the Goal
I do read fairly fast, especially light fiction. But not that fast. At present I have just finished “First Ladies: An Intimate Group Portrait of White House Wives” by Margaret Truman. This is a wonderful look at the job of being First Lady and how many different approaches by women of so many different backgrounds did this job.
Three books are ongoing. “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew” is one I read as a child. It is very much a portrait of growing up poor around 1900, although it is fiction. “Arsene Lupin Gentleman Thief” was mentioned in “The Cat Who Saved the Library” along with “Moby Dick” (read the abridged version!) and “The Three Musketeers”.
Third is “Of Time and Turtles”. This is a fascinating look at turtle rescue and turtles. These creatures have existed for 350 million years, yet modern humans may destroy these special, unique animals by greed, carelessness and ignorance.
If all else fails, I suppose I can count picture books. I read and review (on my Goodreads blog) about six a week. I do hate to not make my reading goal.
When I finish reading a book, I do a review on Goodreads. The picture books are reviewed on my Goodreads blog.
