Great Reads to Unwind, post NaNo

I'm already compiling a great reading list to chill out and refresh the soul after NaNoWriMo is over. Here's what I have planned for the month of December. Anybody read these?

Came in the mail today:

1) Salvage the Bones, National Book Award Winner for fiction, 2011. A 14-year-old narrator during Hurricane Katrina.
2) Chime: Y/A, also a NBA nominee. Mystery, fantasy, and witchcraft.

On my Kindle, waiting:

3) The Tiger's Wife. Another NBA nominee. Adult (?) fiction by a twentysomething Yugoslavian prodigy.

4) Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I admit to having already started this one, and I'm dying laughing. Queer teens, depression, and how not to get your heart broken.

On my bedside table, waiting:

5) Wildwood. By Decembrists singer-songwriter Colin Meloy. I've read the first few pages of this already. Narrator's baby brother is abducted by "a murder of crows" on the first page. Did you know a flock of crows is called a "murder?" Seriously. This is just my cup of tea.

Also on my bedside table, waiting:
6) A pile of New Yorkers a mile high.

Recommendations, friends? What are you planning to read, come December, 2011, to round off your year?
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And, for added inspiration, Decembrists' follies:

If a Book Falls in the Forest...Lessons from The Book Thief.

I'm reading an astonishing YA novel, The Book Thief. Heard of it, by chance? I'm probably the last aspiring kid writer on the planet to read it, but I am flabbergasted by Zusak's use of language, his wit, his inventiveness, and his take-no-prisoners approach to historical fiction. Zusak must break every rule, contort every piece of advice, I've ever read or heard about writing for children, and it's brilliant. Just as inspiring is Zusak's contention in the video below that even if he knew, in advance, that not a single person would ever read his book, that it would never be published, that it would sink into obscurity, he still would have written it. In exactly that way.

A Few Things This Writer is Grateful For

Okay, maybe it's a little corny to do the gratitude stuff, but last night I just had this wave of it wash over me, and I felt so damn lucky. Or, all the yoga I've been doing is finally starting to have an effect.

1. I'm Free
I get to spend my days doing exactly what I want: Writing. Reading. Thinking about writing and reading. Teaching what I'm reading. Talking to other writers about what I'm writing and reading. Reading to other writers what I'm writing. Listening to other writers read what they're writing.

2. I'm awed by the writers I've met.
Incredible talent within my two writers groups. So many distinctive voices, ways of looking at the world and figuring out what's important to say. The most beautiful ways to say it. How to best arrange all those wonderful insights. Every one a role model.