Kay Hudson

Here we are at the beginning of 2020, a number I surely gave no thought to whatsoever a few decades back. But then I never expected to end up in Texas when I was growing up in Wisconsin and Florida, and I’ve been here since 1976.

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In 2019, alas, I read less, wrote no fiction, gained a few pounds, and my house is still cluttered. On the other hand, I spent a lot of fun time with a group of friends known as the Lunch Bunch (and we also like to shop), I made it to three writing retreat weekends with friends Gerry Bartlett, Jo Anne Banker, and Nina Bangs (we talked plot and writing, judged contest entries, and read, but there were also restaurants and shopping on the agenda) and took a wonderful trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the Wine and Chile Fiesta (talk about restaurants and shops!).

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Back home, I replaced my faithful but disintegrating (at 252,400 miles) 2004 Corolla with a 2020 Corolla XLE, with all sorts of bells, whistles, and modern technology that I’m still getting used to (how did I ever drive without a back up camera and blind spot monitors?) I still find it amazing to start my car by pushing a button.

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Buying a car made the cost of replacing my almost-ten-year-old computer seem negligible, so I finally took that plunge. Well, I had to—the old one simply died. (Back up your files, friends, back up your files. I knew that computer was failing, and my flash drive was up to date.) True to my buying habits, I replaced my old HP (my second—the first one lasted about seven years) with a new HP, but this time I bought an all-in-one computer with wireless mouse and keyboard, and a new wireless printer/scanner. The lack of cables is a wonderful thing. I bought a couple of books (surprise!) on Windows 10 and Office 365, but I’ve rarely needed to look at them. Both programs have some odd quirks, coming as I did from Windows 7 and Office 2007, but we’ve been using the newer software at work for about a year and a half. (Yes, I’m still working at the Scorekeeper, but only three days a week.)

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Reading in 2019: Fewer books and, according to Goodreads, fewer pages. My original Goodreads Challenge target was 60 books, but a few weeks ago I felt stressed and lowered it to 52. One book a week! There was a time, long ago, when I read a book a day, but I wasn’t doing much else back then. As it happened, I did hit 60 books (finishing the last one on New Year’s Eve) and 14,387 pages. Also according to Goodreads, the most popular book I read was The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (and it was terrific). (Feel free to join me on Goodreads—I’m the Kay Hudson in Seabrook, TX.)

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I have, at last count, 710 books in my Amazon cloud. In 2019 I actually read 48 of them, along with 12 paper books (six of those in series I have been reading on paper for years). That brings my ever-increasing ebook reading up to 80 percent. That does not explain the stack of unread paper books on the coffee table or the shelf over my bed (but I did recently buy a new bedroom lamp that makes reading on paper in bed a lot more comfortable). And I wouldn’t even guess at the number of books, read or not, around my house. (A few trips to Half Price Books are probably in order.)

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In 2019 I read ten romances by seven authors (including two each by Gerry Bartlett, Cheryl Bolen, and AE Jones), 26 mysteries (more than one each by Waverly Curtis, Robert Goldsborough, David Handler, Diane Kelly, and Kate Parker), only two science fiction novels (both old, neither living up to their reputations), six mainstream (or otherwise out of the box) novels, and sixteen nonfiction books (ranging from books on words and writing, through true crime and memoirs by Leah Remini and Kate Mulgrew, to 19th century female balloonists and the history of air conditioning).

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I haven’t bought any books today, but it’s still early afternoon, and the Amazon Prime first reads email is waiting for me. I don’t think I’ll run out of reading material any time soon.

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Happy New Year, and Happy Reading.