good reads: january.

my goal is to read (at least) two books every month in 2012. so far, it's been a success! one month down, eleven more to go.

a million miles in a thousand years, by donald miller

this was the first don miller book that i bought, and read. back around the time it first came out, i heard great things about it from the people i follow on twitter. someone eventually posted a photo of the author's note and that's when i decided to read it. i have this thing about not being able to read "used" books, i went out and purchased my own copy. hardcover and all.

i read it through, although probably to quickly, and loved every page. max lucado is quoted on the back cover saying, "i already want to re-read this book." YES. exactly.

three or so years later, i just re-read it. again, i loved every page. there's something about the combination of his writing style and the way he talks about life as a story that makes me feel inspired and motivated, which are two great things.

favorite chapters:

a character is what he does
listen to your writer
something on the page
how to make yourself write a better story
a tree in a story about a forest
the reason God hasn't fixed you yet
great stories have memorable scenes

extremely loud & incredibly close, by jonathan safran foer

basically, this book is all over tumblr, whether people are quoting it or talking about how much they love it. naturally, i wanted to see what the fuss was all about, but i never really got around to reading it. mainly because reading it would require that i buy it and i'm pretty good at talking myself out of buying things.

well, the book was turned into a movie and if i wanted to read it before i watched it, i was going to have to suck it up and spend a few dollars. fortunately, i got a target gift card for Christmas and was able to find the non-movie cover version. score!

the book was pretty much as great as all the tumblr folk claim it to be, but it is a bit different. the writing style is unique and it's not your typical feel-good type of story. i loved it though, and like a million miles, i want to re-read it already. it was my first time reading it and i feel like there might be a lot of smaller details that i didn't pick up on the first time around.

one thing i noticed i picked up from reading extremely loud & incredibly close: i now frequently describe things as "extremely" or "incredibly." it hasn't started to annoy me yet though.