What are your goals for 2012?

I blame Julie and Julia:365 days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen-How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living for starting this trend of challenging yourself to follow a year long quest, & then write a book about it.  In the past, didn't people just make New Year's resolutions & then give them up after a couple of months?  Suddenly, everyone's spending a year travelling with kids (& in one memorable case, a cat) or following all the advice from women's magazines or saying yes to everyone who asks for a date or spending the last months of their twenties embarking on a multitide of adventures for a  "year of fear".  Below you can find a list of memoirs by folks who have dedicated themselves to changing up their lives, in one form or another, for a year (or thereabouts).  What do you think?  Could you do it?  Would you do it?  What challenge would you consider taking on for a year?

365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life

Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of  the Queen of Talk

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible 

The Year of Living like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do

The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese

The Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes

The Year of Yes: A Memoir

A Year of Sundays: Taking the Plunge (and Our Cat) to Explore Europe

Living a Year of Kaddish

Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously

Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Twelve Self-Help Programs, One Whirlwind Year of Improvement

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

Diary of a Real Estate Rookie: My Year of Flipping, Selling, and Rebuilding-- and What I Learned (The Hard Way)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Give it Up: My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading

Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously

Learning to Breathe: My Yearlong Quest to Bring Calm to My Life

The Feast Nearby: How I Lost My Job, Buried a Marriage, and Found My Way by Keeping Chickens, Foraging, Preserving, Bartering, and Eating Locally (All on $40 a Week)

My Year with Eleanor: A Memoir

Chastened: The Unexpected Story of My Year Without Sex

A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy

One Year Off: Leaving it All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children

The Happiness Project, or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean my Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me about Love, Sex, and Starting Over

Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea

The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time

Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living

No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes about Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process

The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping

The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment that Transformed Their Lives

52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust

The One-Week Job Project: One Man, 1 Year, 52 Jobs


Or, if you'd prefer not to take on a major quest next year, here are some self-improvement titles to help you just have a great year!

The Best Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It

The Gift of a Year: How to Give Yourself the Most Meaningful, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Year of Your Life

A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as if It Were Your Last

Romancing the Ordinary: A Year of Simple Splendor

Life Makeovers: 52 Practical and Inspiring Ways to Improve Your Life One Week at a Time


One way or another, here's hoping you have a happy new year!