I’ve asked people whom I know to be avid readers for the title of ONE book which they read in 2011 that made an impression on them – ie gave them a new perspective, was enjoyable to get lost in, or difficult to slog through yet difficult to forget. It could be a classic novel, science fiction, biography, business, self help, you name it – and, while some of the same titles popped up again and again, the results are various.

Many people tried to sneak in a second favorite – or two or three. (It didn’t work, I can count – even in Spanish!) Luckily for some (myself included), runners-up were the number one choice of others. One book does deserve special mention though, being included in so many people’s second breath: Jennifer Eagan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.

I may never own a kindle. I may never walk down the street reading a novel from a thin slice of a tablet (really, I have seen people do this.) I may always board planes with a carry-on that is heavier than my checked baggage because it is filled with books and actual hold-in-your-hand magazines.

That’s what makes me love the list below. It’s a bit like walking into a room with floor to ceiling bookcases just to stare at the bindings.

May this list give you reading inspiration for the New Year!

Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea
David Benioff, City of Thieves
Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Trilogy
John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
Robert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia
Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance
Jennifer Haigh, Faith
John Irving, The Cider House Rules
John Irving, The World According to Garp
Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
Shaun Johnson, The Native Commissioner
Brad Kessler, Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese
Barbara Kingsolver, Lacuna
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
JD Salinger, Nine Stories
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, De Kooning: An American Master
Rabindranath Tagore, The Hungry Stones and Other Stories
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
John Updike, Rabbit, Run
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

For more, check out the Best Books Read in 2010 list.

Nevertheless, most of my friends from home (America) expect to see me over the holiday and ask if I am having turkey dinner on Thursday night. The answer is no. For Thanksgiving this year, I worked, went to yoga, then ate two cookies and drank a spot of tea for dinner.

And when I say no, nothing for thanksgiving, people feel really sorry for me. Honestly (mom and dad cover your eyes), I could care less. That’s right; Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Neither turkey nor (American) football is all that appealing and so the dinner – while it does make a house smell amazing – is not the end all be all. Yes, there are the “sides,” but green beans and pumpkin pie won’t send you into a food coma on the couch; and there is nothing like being taunted while rummaging in the refrigerator for lettuce leftovers to make you more annoyed than thankful: eating again? How could you possibly put more in your stomach??

Not to mention, it is stressful, this Thanksgiving business. Getting the bird from the store into the home into the oven onto the table. So much running around, so much family drama, so many people and personalities and emotions smooshed into a confined space on one, single day.

Living abroad, I am thankful that I do not have to contend with Thanksgiving. But I do miss the day after. This day right now: Friday. When America is placid and no one is working until Monday. When all the newspapers are running stories about what it means to give thanks and the columnists are personal about poverty, hunger, and war.

We get a lot of holidays here in Spain. And Europe is far more advanced than the United States when it comes to vacation days, thus promoting health, production, and creativity. But this November holiday is something the United States gets right. Take a look at Facebook and you will find thoughtful updates from friends about for what and whom they are thankful, their reasons for happiness, why we should remember those less fortunate. Not a single work-related email has arrived in my inbox from America since Wednesday night, and I won’t dare lob one across the ocean until Monday.

For many, Thanksgiving is a proper holiday of relief and a legitimate excuse to do absolutely nothing but be with the ones you love. It’s the nothing that I miss about Thanksgiving.

And suddenly my body reacts, before I even see him. Before my brain even computes the sound traveling down the street, I break into a cold sweat. Coming towards me is a barrel of a man, booming some deep song of a word that I cannot understand.

Muscle memory is a powerful thing and people who live, or have lived, in Boston are trained for this sort of thing. Some expats may have been worried to cross paths with someone slightly unhinged or still drunk from the night before and ready for a fight. But not me. I start checking my pockets. Where are my keys?

You see, in Boston (ahem, Cambridge/Somerville) one is ever prepared to leap out of bed and into the snowsleetrain at the first sound of a man’s voice from a car loudspeaker. Speed is of the essence and the goal is to move one’s vehicle to the other side of the street or to the next block or to a friend’s house cross town before the army of trucks rumble around the corner to tow away or throw a boot on any car that dares exist on the second Tuesday or last Friday of the month.

Of course, this particular morning I was in Madrid. No one else seemed to be paying much mind to this man and his circus leader voice; so, I pulled myself together and stopped frantically rummaging around my bag for keys to a car I no longer drive.

And here’s the lovely Spanish bit. This man is no vagrant nor does he drive a truck. He is a chatarrero – one of the oldest professions in Spain. A collector of metal and scraps, he walks from barrio to barrio, yelling out “Chatarrero! El Chataaaaaarrero!” so that people will gather up all the scrap in their home or shop and give it to him to take away. Recycling, old world style.

Madrid, however, seems more difficult to crack. The city was a key destination on my solo backpacking trip during college, but I cut my stay short and headed to the sunshine of Lisbon. My second trip to Madrid proved the city more promising, yet still not entirely accessible. It was like looking into a still pool of water: what you see is mostly your own reflection and that of the world you inhabit. And then, suddenly, the quick shadow of a fish.

Boston is very much the same way, slightly unwelcoming for a while unless you were born in the state or went to one of its fistfuls of universities (and many of the state’s dwellers fall in either category.) So, what I am saying is, I am accustomed to living in a place where I don’t feel entirely at home.

But just a year and a half into Madrid, something has happened. (You guessed this was coming, right?) The outside-in feeling is slowly but surely being replaced with the ease and familiarity of walking off the plane and into Barajas Airport.

It’s many little things (clichés are after all…) like the fact that my vegetable and fruit seller greets me each Saturday at the rushed hour of 1:30pm with a double kiss. (My vegetable consumption is such that my roommate suggests I assure them I buy produce for the entire piso and that I eat meat during the week.) Or maybe it’s the fact that when I walk into my bank’s branch, they welcome me as if I were entering the bar Cheers. (Surely my command of the Spanish language has put me on a “special” list taped somewhere near the panic button.)

Or it might just be the weather. Day after day of blue skies and a dry 88 degrees can’t hurt.

Eating alone is all fine and good when it’s breakfast or lunch, but dinner on Friday night tends to exist in pairs and parties. So, as I made my way through the 4th arrondissement, I admit that while my hunger grew, my courage waned.

When I was about to give in to street food or, worse yet, the mini-bar, I remembered something a friend had told me. (Funny thing about friends.) She had once been inspired (somehow, by me) to book a table at a swanky restaurant when visiting friends on the west coast… and to go there alone. She admitted to being nervous and self conscious, but she still did it. And you don’t have to guess that it was a good experience.

Shame can work in our favor sometimes. There is no way I could get around that compliment of compliments and so I forged ahead and went into the next place I saw. (No, it was not McDonald’s.) And let’s face it. We are talking about dinner in Paris. We are not talking about jumping out of a plane or a relationship, or giving a speech to an audience of five hundred.

Turns out the patrons of Cafe Le Bouledogue Brasserie are locals, the staff is attentive (funny thing about a woman dining alone) and the food comes to the table at just the perfect pace. And, in addition to the fact that I learned that leeks can be the most delicious of vegetables, I also learned that it is possible to be inspired by the people whom we have at one time inspired.

It comes around.

The next morning, quite pleased with myself, I jump out of bed: It’s a new year! It snowed two feet last night! The world is for the taking! I donned my boots and set forth into this beautiful new existence that comes with the first day of a new year.

It turns out, the New Year was closed.

Not only did every house on the block belong to a bankrupt film set, but the streets were unploughed, the sidewalks yet uncovered. I walked. I drank in the solitary beauty of a world in which everyone is asleep. And then my marvel turned paranoia and I needed reassurance that I was in Massachusetts and not a twilight zone.

Luckily, Porter Square Books, a delightfully independent store with good books and good coffee and good food was actually open – and the person who took my coffee order did not seem vexed that my arrival validated her need to work so early on New Year’s day.

And finally, here’s my point. (A point to bringing up wintry New England from a Madrid-based computer in May? Yes.) The point is that New Year’s Day in Boston* is like every Sunday in Madrid.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still. Many of us in the United States use our weekends to get things done. “Doing errands” is a true American pastime. And so, a culture shock for an American in Madrid is the inability to do anything that resembles an errand after 2pm on Saturday and anytime at all on Sunday.

This scenario is armed with a plethora of positives. In Spain, one is forced to slow down on Sunday, those with family in the area (and that would be many) spend their afternoon together, there is plenty of time to sit at a sunny terraza with a drink and the world’s best potato chip. There is time to just be. I’d say that’s rather good for the soul, wouldn’t you?

For me, Sunday bestows the time to attempt at shaping these words into some coherent form. And yet, make no mistake that as I write this, my dry cleaning remains uncollected for the second week in a row, my refrigerator is resolutely bare, my shoes need cobbling, and there are a million odds and ends that I need to do and buy but cannot. I cannot because it is also Sunday for the people who work in those stores.

And so, Sundays in Madrid – while there is still plenty to do (lest the Spanish tourism office take offense) – are delightfully quiet. And they often remind me of that New Year’s Day in Boston when I had the world to myself. If Sunday is the cousin of New Year’s day, perhaps it’s an opportunity to set some resolutions, to look at the world and our lives with a renewed enthusiasm that flows through the next six days.

Why not? There’s nothing else to do.

*and by Boston, I mean Cambridge and Somerville.

The phone is the devil to a person learning another language. If I pick up a ringing phone there will be some fast talking Spaniard on the other end – and they are just as difficult to interrupt as they are to understand. Once I do manage to slip in and ask them to speak more slowly, they just start the entire conversation over again at the same speed… because, let’s be realistic here, I am picking up a ringing phone in Spain. Where they speak Spanish.

Watching dubbed television is equally ridiculous. When the mouths form shapes that do not match the sounds coming from the TV, it’s impossible to follow. But so much is dubbed here in Spain that I should get over it — just like my fear of the telephone. Spain is going to keep on dubbing American TV shows and the phone is going to keep on ringing.

Sometimes I bump into my Madrileña roommate in the hallway and we will have a conversation while I am not wearing contacts or glasses. I can’t see her lips moving, so I must concentrate. I unconsciously move closer and closer to her in an effort to see her face. Now, Americans find this lack of space between two people horrifying, but the Spanish would probably prefer to converse when I can’t see, because it means I am an appropriate two inches away from them.

Getting out of one’s comfort zone is always a good thing and clearly my zone exists as far away from the telephone as possible. But today I got over one of those ridiculous hurdles and actually, willingly (well, okay not entirely willingly) picked up the phone to make a call in Spanish. Ironically, for an eye doctor’s appointment.

We’ll see if it was a success when I go to the given destination at 9pm next Tuesday.

Wait…9pm doesn’t seem like an appropriate time for an eye doctor’s appointment, does it?

This is not the best way to enter a Spanish market. First off, there will be no way to determine which stall to approach because you are starving and everything looks good. And upon making the slightest movement to one vendor over another – probably because you look dazed and not of these parts – a man will sidle up out of nowhere and offer help. This help is not so easily brushed aside. At this point something usually comes out of my mouth like… gracias, pero no sé lo que quiero. Estoy pensando. (thank you but I don’t know what I want. I’m thinking.)

Now, this does not make the man go away. It just means he stands silently by my side for a few minutes before he starts guessing my favorite fruit.

There is a clock in my head: 45 more minutes in the market, 30 more minutes in the market, choose your vegetables! choose your fruit! Don’t forget the cheese stalls! Twenty more minutes until they close! And here’s this man hustling around his stall, grabbing vegetables and putting them in my bags, ordering tranquila!

These markets are among the best things about Europe. One can spend hours in a place like this, comparing prices and quality and chatting with the sellers and customers alike (even me with my slim Spanish.)

Of course, there are some little ladies with very sharp elbows that should be given wide berth. But even they are a good time, because after shoving you aside for their apricots, they will point out that your wallet is easy pickings for thieves, the vendor two stalls over has the best lettuce, or simply insist that your jacket is from Argentina not India. (It’s best not to question.)

Madrid wins on the local side of the oh-so-American organic vs. local food debate. An argument I am forced to have with myself because, just try to talk about organic produce in Spain and you will be met with a blank stare. They don’t care. The Spanish buy the food, it tastes good, they eat it.

Speaking of, my random purchases yesterday were: one cauliflower, one eggplant, one bit of ginger, two onions, five purple tomatoes, one bundle of strawberries, parsley, two lemons, and an avocado. I could have bought anything and it would have been a success.

I, on the other hand, cannot keep my eyes off her. Nor can I stop watching her replacement – a younger girl who tires after ten minutes because, my guess is, she uses her entire body. She even employs her face to relay the verbal place-holders (uhhhh) and grimaces Christopher Poole uses when he cannot find the words to describe his ridiculously popular image board website. And when the words do come, they are obscure packages like “Internet meme” and “online handles.” Even the commonplace “servers and bandwidth” seems daunting in the land of signage. As someone who, just the other week, accidentally said “mesa” instead of “mes” I cannot fathom finding the words to translate a presentation about the origin of 4chan and Canvas…with my hands.

The New York Times says that Poole is a successful public speaker, but that is being kind. Surely, in a year’s time he will be a star but on this day he stands in one place, he flops his hands around, he suffers from dry mouth. It’s the content that sells. the content underneath the delivery. (coupled with the draw of getting a look at this 23 year old who created, from his boyhood bedroom, the Internet’s next big thing.)

As luck would have it, the third signer is a mix of the previous two: she is not as calm as the first, nor is she as passionate or desperate as the last.

I am at the front for these things (particularly in a large crowd such as this) because it is common knowledge that sitting at the front of the class helps you hear, see, and understand the content. And clearly I get distracted; because this whole sign language thing begets the contemplation of how we access and digest meaning.

Not only do our words create a thin veil over the value we attempt to communicate, but these signers demonstrate (for how else can they do it?) that our bodies likewise get in the way. Here were three examples – ranging from cold to moderate to effusive and I’m hard pressed to claim that one surpasses the other.

I would have loved to have asked the two deaf audience goers their opinion. Do you prefer a translator who is over the top or muted? How about somewhere in between? At what point is personality necessary and when does it get distracting?

Perhaps it is simply a matter of taste. We choose people to be part of our lives based on what works for us. Because, surely we are all translators for one another in this world. And the trick is to find others who render what they see, hear, touch, taste, and know in a way we can understand. On a limb, it is arguable that “meaning” in the world is one singular thing cut into pieces, dispersed, then multiplied in its various moving parts. Everything headed in separate directions.

Of course, if we all understood each other perfectly, the world would be a simple, uncomplicated place. Misunderstandings keep the world from being boring, keep our lives beautiful and interesting and new because we must forever endeavor to find ways to understand.

I can do without the straightforward translation. On the other hand, I want a fighting chance to know my own meaning of the world.

But, that’s just me.

So, needless to say, I was dubious about my friend’s reaction to my Spanish quarters of 50 sq meters. Now, she’s a kind girl as well as a small girl, so I wasn’t expecting her to drop her bags and look around aghast.

But I wasn’t expecting her to love it either. To my surprise, she thought the apartment perfectly reflected me. She would have been able to easily pick this poor, small, shabby apartment that tried to sneak by without a kitchen, right out of a lineup. (It did boast floor to ceiling windows and a central location.) Granted, I had brought a rug and some small but prized frames with me to Madrid, and there were some books present. But I was surprised.

And so, months later, I think of this surprise as I lay on a new bed in my new bedroom in a new barrio of Madrid. Supposedly, my whole living situation has changed. I’m sharing with roommates after a long stint of choosing to do otherwise. This is quite different. This is a change.

But my room looks quite familiar — and will undoubtedly look familiar to this friend when she pays another visit. And it makes me wonder — based on these very physical indications — is change really possible? We may change our surroundings. We may change our appearance. We may change our job and even our daily routine. Our tastes evolve. We can choose to change how we spend our time, and we can choose to take our past history into consideration and change how we react to people, places, things.

And yet, we keep dragging our selves with us wherever we go.