I have always enjoyed reading and spend a considerable amount of time doing it. This year, I had set a few goals for myself to change and direct my reading intake.
My 2020 reading resolutions:
Read 60 books
Venture outside my reading comfort zone
Let me explain the second: I am a fiction junkie. I love novels. If you wanted to set a Tina book trap, placing these between two covers would be a good bet:
Picturesque setting
Introspective narrator
A hard-to-put-down plot—there should be some action and twists
Genre-wise, light fantasy never hurts.
StoryGraph lets you import your Goodreads library to identify patterns in your reading history. Here's my StoryGraph showing my reading history across all time (or, everything I've logged on Goodreads in the past several years, which excludes anything I read but felt too embarrassed about to share online). You can see that fantasy, young adult, and other fiction sub-genres dominate my reading.
Reading fantasy and/or young adult novels sometimes feels like I'm ordering the same thing over and over at restaurants. I love fiction, but I wanted to push myself to read more works that I might not otherwise have picked up if I was letting my natural reading preferences dominate.
How did I do?
#1: Read 60 books
For the 60 books goal, I track the books I read and reread on Goodreads, and at the time of writing this, I have actually read 76 books, including rereads.
This is slightly higher than usual; in 2019 I read 67 books and in 2018, 69. I'll chalk up the extra numbers to
COVID-19 social guidelines keeping me inside and unoccupied more than usual (or, me yielding quietly to the quiet life, regardless of global pandemics), and
some very short children's books and poetry books.
That brings us to goal #2:
#2: Venture outside my reading comfort zone
At the end of 2019, my goal for 2020 was to read more nonfiction and poetry. Bear with me and my clumsy phrasing: In the summer of 2020, I expanded my goal to include books centering perspectives of those less represented in media than I am... that is, featuring characters or written by authors who do not look like me and are further from the "default" than me—in plain language, more non-white and non-East Asian-American perspectives and LGBTQIA perspectives.
I didn't not fulfill my goal—that is, I did read books satisfying this criteria, but because I didn't set a concrete, quantitative goal, it is difficult to measure my progress objectively. I'll set more measurable goals for next year. I do feel like the practice of consciously choosing different books in 2020 has made me more likely to continue choosing them generally.
Here are a few books I picked up that were outside my default reading zone and that I enjoyed very much:
This summer, we were looking for an Airbnb for my 27th birthday weekend. I found a zany posting for an Adirondacks cabin with some noticeable pagan affinities and reached out to the owner. While we didn't end up staying there, the owner and I exchanged some nice correspondence, and they recommended me a few books. I read The Splendid and the Vile on the way up to upstate New York... or, at least, on the way out of the city, when the traffic was so still that I could read without motion sickness.
I've never been a Winston Churchill stan, but I understand the mystique of the figure and of his time better than I did before reading this. Churchill had assistants transcribe most everything he spoke aloud, which must have been like the WWII equivalent of having a Twitter account.
Works from a very funny, very smart essayist (does that describe all essayists?). Reading this, I had two contradictory thoughts: 1. Wow, her voice and style make me feel hopeful that I, too, can write, and 2. Wow, she is so real and human as to be unreal and unbelievably talented... I could never write as she does.
Totally unputdownable—stayed up all night reading this.
This was awesome. The Cutmouth Lady is described on Goodreads as "cool, pungent perverse gaijin schoolgirl" (lesbian) fiction. If you have a hard time finding this book, Romy Ashby has copies for sale on her website. I will also personally lend you my copy.
I've been trying to be a better listener. Still working on it, and this helped a great deal.
You'll notice I didn't list any poetry books that I enjoyed, as there were none. I assure you that I tried to like poetry and that I will keep trying. Please send any suggestions my way!
2020 reads worth mentioning
2020 was a great year for reading... not that I've never had a bad year for reading, actually. Here are a few that I really enjoyed—not necessarily my favorites, but reads that felt fresh in a 76-deep sea of books (aside from those already mentioned):
“Modern Bonjour Tristesse” is pretty apt, and Lemoine actually makes a direct comparison in the book. I loved the straightforward but luscious sensory detail, the writing style, the insight and nuance. It felt like a slow-burn, attentive rendering of a still dreamy but recognizable Paris.
Oh, this one was cool. It also just won some kind of book award, if you're into that. An unconventional format and a fresh, zippy voice. I was glad to see a story with a Chinese-American man as the main character.
This book, like most books, was not perfect. I would recommend it carefully, with reservations; there are easy comparisons to Never Let Me Go, but you might not necessarily like one if you like the other. I loved it for the atmosphere it evoked: luscious, dreamlike, and eerie.
Reading this book feels more like being a teenager than my actual experience of being a teenager ever did.
2021 Reading Goals
I'm setting more specific and measurable goals this year!
Read fewer books
I can't help but be aware of how far I'm tracking against my Goodreads Reading Challenge count, and I suspect this awareness does not help nudge me towards more challenging reads. I'm setting the quantity bar intentionally low this year and hoping that will help me pick up more difficult, slower reads instead of reaching for my go-to, easy fiction.
Read 20 books (and fewer than 60 books)
Read different nonfiction
My nonfiction choices this year were very approachable - I mean that they were easily relatable to me. For example, I read Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener (I work in tech) and Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski (I am female-bodied), and I want to branch out more. I just started reading Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a recommendation from my coworker Sami.
Read 3 nonfiction books on topics outside my daily awareness
I feel like I spend so much time reading that I may as well channel some of that time into self-improvement / professional growth.
Read 2 nonfiction books that could help me work & think better
Read different formats
Having had great experiences with essay collections and graphic novels, I want to keep going! And, fine, poetry.
Read books from 3 different essayists (2 I cannot have read before)
Read a graphic novel
Read 2 poetry books (1 must be from a dead poet)
Be choosier about my fiction
I love fantasy, and I'm not necessarily discerning about my fantasy reads. Sometimes I'll pick one based on how the plot sounds on paper and be disappointed (e.g. I really like the story of Beauty and the Beast, am eager to pick up its retellings, and have read many that fell short of the mark). Next year I want to read a series that's been recommended to me again and again: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson!
Read Mistborn #1 by Brandon Sanderson
Thanks for reading this far. I'd love to hear your reflections on your own reading - do you set reading goals? What are your most-read genres? And, of course, do you have any book recommendations?