The new year of grace 2013

Goodness! 16th of January already! Advent and Christmastide have already passed by (unless you count it till Candlemas on 2nd February) and we're back into the green of Ordinary Time. I've made one or two resolutions for the new year, and so far they are going reasonably. Normally, I wouldn't know whether they are going well as I'd have forgotten them already. Or I wouldn't have made any in the first place.
Anyway, here they are with commentary:

1. To work hard. (I was terribly lazy last year)
2. To read more. (I'll discuss this below)
3. To work on those nasty habits. (don't need to say more)
4. To stay in touch with friends. (Again, a laziness thing)
5. To move out of parents' place. (I'm getting desperate!)

1 and 4 seem to be going quite well. I seem to have developed a bit more zeal, and meeting friends has motivated me as well. 2 is still pending and I have a small pile of books lying on my table. Here's a photo...

3 is not going well, and 5 is a wait-and-see.

The books you can see in the pic are:
Bible (duh!)
Bilbo Le Hobbit (i.e. French translation of The Hobbit)
Imitation of Christ (read this before, but I want to read it again)
Introduction to the Devout Life (inspired by Shameless Popery's recommendation)
True Devotion to Mary (inspired by a post on Catholic Teuchtar's page at the turn of the year)
The Ten Commandments of Lifting Weights (so that my exercising is not a vanity project but a form of asceticism)
Crime and Punishment (started but not yet finished)

I also started War and Peace about two years ago and read about a fifth, so might try and crack on with that too.
Regarding the books written by the saints, I also hope to try and incorporate their teaching into my life and not just read them for pleasure or academically. I did this last Lent and it really helped.
I'll start with St Francis de Sales as his feast day is coming up soon.

Anyway, God bless you in 2013.

P.S. I've changed my name on here for the second time. My first name was sprachmeister (language master), which is rather arrogant, then sprachenbegeisterter (language enthusiast) which is a long and clumsy word. I finally changed it to the self-deprecatory spraffmeister (cos self-deprecation is thing to do these days, ken?) For those who don't know, to spraff is to talk nonsense or to waffle on, rather like what I'm doing now, and meister is master...