I must have read over 70 books this year. I stopped counting when I passed 50 books sometime in August. Still, when I see lists like this, I always feel like I haven’t read anything, ever. Of the NYTimes’ 100 Notable Books for 2007, I have read four of them.

Not that I really expect myself to have read all these books. It seems like lists of books make me worried. I started to go through 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and quickly got annoyed. Who says I should read all these books? Quit being so bossy, Listology.

In other thoughts, I had no idea so many interesting biographies came out this year. Leonard Woolf? Thomas Hardy? Edith Wharton? Oooooh…

Random points:

It’s somewhat hypocritical for me to post this since my family wants to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving, but Keri Smith has a list of 10 things to do instead of shopping on Buy Nothing Day, November 23.

Every year, people complain about how Christmas is commercialized and has lost its meaning. I like the idea of consuming less so there is less distraction while we get back to why we have Christmas in the first place.

Personally, I’m making more gifts this year and cutting back on the number of gifts I give. Most of it is simply that I have less money, what with having a mortgage and all. But when I wrote a list of things to make, I was surprised by how many things I was capable of making that people might not mind getting as a present from me. I just wish I had gotten around to making my own vanilla in time for Christmas gifts. Oh well…

We’re moved into the house. It took four good friends, two solid days, and lots and lots of boxes, bags, and milk cartons, but here we are.

It’s strange to break your life down and move it to a new place. It made me think a lot about why I have so much stuff. Even though I took three trips to the goodwill after the garage sale, as I unpack, I keep putting things in a goodwill box again. No one needs this many mugs or books or clothes. My rule now: If I haven’t used it in a year and it isn’t, say, my wedding dress, I’m getting rid of it. I feel like I’m drowning in my possessions, and that’s exactly how I don’t want to feel.

On a happier note, I derive a lot of joy from every little thing that is pulling the house together. You really don’t admire the plates on electrical outlets until you live without them for awhile. And I picked a green paint for my office, one that I’m 87% sure will work with the new floors and my design idea. Such a relief. Also, we bought a chandelier for the dining room. Light! At last!

So yeah, things are coming together. We have a lot to do. There are boxes to unpack, rooms to paint, and bathrooms to remodel. But I like this house. I’m thankful for it. And hey, just in time for Thanksgiving.

Another study bemoaning that Americans are dumb and lazy and don’t read enough. You know, after awhile you wish people would stop saying “here’s a problem” and start solving the problem, already.

The new report made findings in several areas:

•We are reading less. Americans, especially teenagers and young adults but also college graduates, do little recreational reading. Nearly half of those ages 18 to 24 who were surveyed read no books for pleasure at all. Those ages 15 to 24 who read voluntarily did so for only seven to 10 minutes a day. And among college graduates, reading literature, such as fiction, poetry and plays, dropped by 18 percent from 1982 to 2002.

•We are reading less well. Americans who do read are doing it less proficiently, particularly teenagers and young males, although average reading scores for 9-year-olds recently have risen.

“Elementary schools are doing a good job,” Gioia said, “but the gains top out in adolescence.”

Among adult men and women, proficiency is stagnant or declining at all educational levels, dropping 20 percent from 1993 to 2003 among those with graduate degrees, for example. Those who read the least also had the lowest writing proficiency scores.

•Poor reading skills limit work and life opportunities. Employers rank reading comprehension and written communication skills highly, and those who read least frequently scored lowest in these areas. Poor readers are the most likely to drop out of high school, and low reading ability is common among those in prison.

•Reading correlates with active cultural and civic life. Literary readers were more than three times as likely to visit museums, attend plays or concerts and create art as nonreaders, and more likely to play sports, attend games or do outdoor activities. They also were more likely to do volunteer or charity work and to vote.

Our move-in date is this Saturday. I just keep telling myself that we are almost at the finish line. It will be nice to have ONE home again next week. And a home I own, too.

The kind of thing I have been doing: Removing wood paneling from the wall.

See, the living room started out looking like this:

Wood paneling and blue carpet. It looks like the 1970s threw up in the room and it dried. So you do the following:

1. Remove the paneling.

2. Put in the mysteriously missing insulation.

3. Sheetrock, patch, texture, and paint the wall a nice off-white.

And voila! You get:

I am starting to feel like I can live in this house now.

Given the quality of most TV shows these days, I’m not sure Hollywood writers deserve more money. Ha ha. Just kidding. Here’s an interesting little video from the very excellent writers of The Office about the writer’s strike. Hey I’m sympathetic. After I cancel TV when we move next week, I will be watching The Office exclusively online, and yes, they deserve a cut of those advertisements that I won’t be clicking on.

Last night I dreamt that a gang of futuristic radicals had stormed all the Lowes in the world and was staging a hostile world take-over by capturing and killing everyone with ray guns. Barbara Walters was supposed to be some help in stopping them, but she was distracted by a media frenzy surrounding a video from the 1970s showing a young version of her engaged in threesomes with models that looked like Twiggy and singing folk songs at anti-war protests. Meanwhile, being from the past, I was very confused about what was going on, so I asked a cat who was wandering around the Lowes Garden Center. It turned out that I could read the cat’s thoughts, which was helpful but surprising. Then it turned out that my cat Miles was hanging out with this other cat. He was very casual about the fact that we could communicate through telepathy. After that, I ended up talking to the leader of the radicals, who had a map of Lowes out and was deciding which department to attack next. The map was really a map of Powell’s Books rather than Lowes, and as the radical decided to attach the Pearl Room next, I decided to get Miles and leave.

That is all I remember.

I have been going to hardware stores too much.