2019 Reading Plans:

I am planning a reprise of my Women Writers project for 2019; with a twist, however: On Goodreads, I used to be a member of the Around the World in 80 Books group (the name is pretty much self-explanatory) -- I'd like to combine that basic idea with my "women writers" selections, with the aim of diversifying my reading regionally / internationally.  While my 2018 Women Writers project was a rousing success in terms of the male / female author ratio (roughly 2:1), it's impossible to miss that I read a lot of books by English and North American authors; so in 2019, I'm going to aim for a wider spread next year, both in terms of authors and book settings.

(By the same token, I am also planning to continue my exploration of the world of Golden Age mysteries, so make of that what you will ... there's bound to be some juggling, I suspect.)

Book Lottery:

With the above diversification aim in mind, I picked my 5 candidates for the first book I am going to read in 2019:

... which were then folded and went into the drawing box, where they were thoroughly shaken up and mixed:

And the winner is:

... which is excellent news, since Xinran's Sky Burial (which I just read today) is truly outstanding; even if The Good Women of China, going by what I've heard, makes for truly heartrending reading at times.