I love books and could spend days curled up on the sofa doing nothing but reading (Is there I way I can make that profitable? Because if I could basically get paid to read all day that would be awesome).

I read a lot of books in 2015 -- or at least more than I expected to with grad school taking up a lot of my free time. On Goodreads, I set a goal to read 24 books this year, figuring with school, I'd average about 2 per month. Well I totally blew that goal out of the water. I read 54 books this year, which on average is more than a book per week.



I'm usually a fiction girl to the core, but this year I branched out into more nonfiction, and I've been on this weird history kick too lately, which is so different than my usual suspense/thriller norm.

So without further ado, here are my favorite fiction and nonfiction books of 2015. To qualify for this list, a book has to be something I've raved about to friends or recommended to my book club a bunch of times.

My Favorite Fiction Books



The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach

I just finished this book a few days ago and it immediately became my favorite book of 2015. I read it on a recommendation from a friend of mine from my reporter days and just instantly fell in love with the story and the characters. As the name implies, this book is about a college baseball player and all the people who circle in and out of his life. It's 512 pages, and I tore through it in about two days over winter break.

The Martian -- Andy Weir

Until I read The Art of Fielding, this had been my favorite fiction book of 2015, I think in large part because it was so different than anything else I'd read. I loved the element of suspense throughout the book, mixed in with the nerdy science and math stuff. I still haven't seen the movie, part of me is afraid to because I'm not sure it will do the book justice.

China Dolls -- Lisa See

I picked this book up on a whim at the library right before my beach vacation and it instantly became the book I loved the most this summer. It's the story of three Asian American girls in San Francisco and how their lives change after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

My Favorite Nonfiction Books



The Boys in the Boat -- Daniel James Brown
I've lost count of the number of times I've recommended this book to people. Every time someone says they're looking for a good nonfiction read, this is what I suggest because it was definitely my favorite nonfiction book of 2015. This is what I wrote on Goodreads: I am not normally a nonfiction fan, but I loved this book. I'm not sure why, it didn't have griping dialogue and at times the plot moved a bit slowly, but there was something about the writing that I just couldn't stop reading.

Ghettoside -- Jill Leovy
If I didn't know this book was nonfiction, I would have thought it was a fiction story for how fast-paced and griping the narrative was. Overall the book looks at crime trends in the country, specifically what happens when black males and why so many of them are murdered. It's a must read.

American Sniper -- Chris Kyle
I loved this book. It's raw, it's real and yes, it's a little bit irreverent. If you're easily offended, you will hate it. My favorite parts where actually the sections written by Chris Kyle's wife.

Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
This was another one of those nonfiction books that I almost didn't believe was a true story. In part because some of the things that happened seemed so impossible to believe and in part because of the way the book was written. Still haven't seen the movie here either, but want to at some point.

If you're curious about what else I read this year, you can check out this very pretty summary that Goodreads put together.

And as always, I'm always open to book recommendations, so feel free to leave any in the comments that you think I should add to my list for 2016.

In keeping with my theme of having a productive and relaxing winter break, I kicked this morning off with a swim workout with my mom.

Unfortunately for me, when I woke up my shoulders/traps were killing me. I'm not sure if it was from finally mastering Crow in yoga on Monday night or from hauling the insanely heavy bags of donations to Salvation Army Monday afternoon.

I've never gotten DOMS from yoga before, but then again, I've never done balancing poses on my hands before either. So who knows what caused the soreness, all I knew was that it was going to make swimming extra special.

While every one else did a nice long warm-up, I did maybe a 150 or 200 and then spent the rest of the time stretching out so that I wouldn't drown during the main set.



Check out those sweet goggle eyes.

The main set was short -- only 1500 -- but about half way through, I was grabbing for the fins because my arms just couldn't take it anymore.

Swimming with fins always feels like cheating because you just glide through the water so much faster. I take a fraction of the strokes I normally take when I'm wearing fins.

To make it so I felt a little less like I was cheating, I alternated kick drills with regular strokes. So I'd do the first 25 kicking and then the second 25 swimming regularly. Rinse, repeat for the remainder of the set.

Even with the fins, my shoulders weren't loving me, so I was happy when we wrapped up.

 

In the relaxation category, my mom and I stopped for breakfast after swimming and I treated myself to a ginger peach tea. Ginger peach tea is my new jam. The coffee place by work has an amazing one and I'm slowly converting all my coworkers.

When we got home I curled up on the sofa with my second book of winter break.

This is where I'll be for a while now.

Because I didn't manage my vacation time very well in the beginning of the year, I found myself at the end of December having a whole bunch of hours I needed to use before the end of the calendar year.

As a result, my last day of work was Friday around 12:30 or so, and I won't be back in the office until January 5.



That is a glorious 17 days in a row of no work.

I plan to use some of the vacation time to be productive and some of it to just straight up be a lazy bum.



But it's a delicate balance. Too much productivity, and I won't feel like I had a vacation at all, but too much down time and I'll be antsy and bored and miserable.

Since I had lots of fun plans over the weekend, today was my first day to really put the productivity/relaxation balance into practice. Here's what today looked like:

Sleep in til 8 a.m. Alleluia what a treat being able to sleep in this late!

Do NOT immediately get up. Instead roll over in bed, grab book from nightstand, read for a solid 45 minutes.

Eventually get up, change into running clothes and go for a nice, easy 5K run.

Get home from the run around 10 a.m. and finish cleaning out closets for my annual "purge" of stuff to Salvation Army.



Could I have a few more pairs of running shoes in my closet?

This year's cleaning took about 3.5 hours on Sunday night and another couple of hours this morning. I ended up with five trash bags full of clothes, shoes and purses, plus a bunch of random household stuff I don't use anymore. (For example, five lamps. Don't ask me why I have five random lamps sitting around that I don't use. I couldn't tell you. Probably left over from a previous move).



Jam all donations into the car for drop off.



Since the Salvation Army isn't far from my cousin's house, make a pit stop to visit her and the twins. Experience the twins not being perfect angles for the first time ever (Ok this is perhaps a slight exaggeration, I did see them once bite each other, but they really did not want to nap today). Develop new found respect for my cousin after watching her wrangle two really wound up kiddos and eventually get them both to sleep about two hours after they went down for naps initially.

Come back home and head to Monday night yoga. Do Crow for the first time ever without falling flat on my face! Consider this a major win and smile stupidly like a fool through the rest of class.

Contemplate starting to pack for PA tonight, but decide to just leave it until the morning and curl up with a (highly recommended by a friend) movie instead.



Overall, I call this a success on the productivity/relaxation front.

Tomorrow I head home to PA. I imagine the only productive thing that will happen is the drive.