New Year's Resolution

While I have been reading like crazy lately, I want to be sure I keep it up. So, I have taken note of this list from the Washington Post - their top ten:

AMERICAN RUST, by Philipp Meyer (Spiegel & Grau, $24.95). This powerful novel about two poor young men caught up in the murder of a homeless man scrapes beneath today's economic headlines to show us a community corroded by poverty and despair. -- Ron Charles

A GATE AT THE STAIRS, by Lorrie Moore (Knopf, $25.95). Profound reflections on marriage and parenthood, racism and terrorism, and especially the baffling, hilarious, brutal initiation to adult life. -- Ron Charles

THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, by Orhan Pamuk, translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely (Knopf, $28.95). Although it can be read as a simple romance, this is a richly complicated work. Masterfully translated, spellbindingly told, a resounding confirmation that Orhan Pamuk is one of the great novelists of his generation. -- Marie Arana

THE STALIN EPIGRAM, by Robert Littell (Simon & Schuster, $26). In what may be his finest novel, Littell dramatizes the horrific events that followed after the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote a 16-line epigram that attacked the all-powerful Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. -- Patrick Anderson

WOLF HALL, by Hilary Mantel (Henry Holt, $27). A brilliant portrait of a society in the throes of disorienting change, anchored by a penetrating character study of Henry VIII's formidable adviser Thomas Cromwell. -- Wendy Smith

Nonfiction
FAMILY PROPERTIES: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, by Beryl Satter (Metropolitan, $30). A penetrating examination of financial discrimination. The most important book yet written on the black freedom struggle in the urban North. -- David J. Garrow

HALF THE SKY: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Knopf, $27.95). Opens our eyes to an enormous humanitarian issue and does so with exquisitely crafted prose and sensationally interesting material. This is one of the most important books I have ever reviewed. -- Carolyn See

POPS: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30). An exceptional biography of, in Teachout's lovely phrase, "a major-key artist." -- Louis Bayard

STITCHES: A Memoir, by David Small (Norton, $24.95). A shockingly candid illustrated memoir of one family's legacy of anger and repression and sadism. -- Michael Sims

A STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families, by Michael Holroyd (Farrar Straus Giroux, $40). A completely delicious and wickedly entertaining biography of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, the queen and king of 19th-century English theater. -- Michael Dirda

Have other suggestions? If not, I will try to see how many I can read from this list and I'll report back.

*For more ideas, visit the complete list: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/features/2008/holiday-guide/gifts/best-books-of-2009/

Quickening

quick·en (kwkn)
v. quick·ened, quick·en·ing, quick·ens
v.tr.
1. To make more rapid; accelerate.
2. To make alive; vitalize.
3. To excite and stimulate; stir: Such stories quicken the imagination.
4. To make steeper.
v.intr.
1. To become more rapid. See Synonyms at speed.
2. To come or return to life: "And the weak spirit quickens" (T.S. Eliot).
3. To reach the stage of pregnancy when the fetus can be felt to move.

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Ahh... quickening - those first fluttery moments when you are aware that there is life inside you. I had already seen her twice on the ultrasound, but it was so reassuring to feel her - like a butterfly or a bird lightly flapping its wings and tapping at the walls of its confinement.

The doctor said it was too early to feel anything. She was wrong. I felt the same movements under the same types of conditions and same time of day for weeks 14 to 20.

But now, the little one is growing stronger. Sometimes still a bird, but more often it feels like little popcorn kicks - pop, pop! pop, pop!

I am sure that there will be times when it is uncomfortable and painful, so for now, I'm just enjoying the knowledge that she is there, growing steadily.