A Need to Read
My goal for 2024 is to read 50 books. I'm currently on book 45 and a time crunch.
At the beginning of 2024, I set myself a goal to read 50 books by the end of the year. As of November 20, 2024, I’m up to 45 books. I’m currently desperately trying to figure out how to squeeze in five more books by the end of the year. It’s doable. Difficult, but doable.
Last year, I officially picked up reading as a hobby again for the first time since high school. Sure, this entire time I was still reading fanfiction, recipes, whatever, but I knew I had to get back into the real deal: books. It would be a lie to say re-picking up reading was for my own betterment. I was obsessed with a man who was packing a heavy bookshelf, and I thought reading would woo him. It did not. He did not care. But at least I picked up an old hobby and good habit again!
My original goal in 2023 was to read 12 books, one for each month. I thought it was totally doable, and it in fact was. By the time I got up to 20 books, I thought I would stretch my goal to 50. That goal I unfortunately did not reach, finishing out the year at 41, which is still much better than what I originally planned.
I can remember the exact book that put me in a rut last year, the one that kept me at 41. I know that sounds negative, but the book was so soul-suckingly good that any book I read after that fell so flat. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt was the book in question, which quickly and effortlessly turned into a new favorite. I believe it’s the best contemporary piece of literature ever.
This year I haven’t read anything nearly as life changing. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. The Orange and Other Poems by Wendy Cope changed my outlook on life, that is until bad things started happening. I even started writing about its magic ways back in August and how it gave me a new zest for life, but now it sits in my drafts. Maybe I’ll finish it one day, but it's summer-centric and it would be inappropriate to publish it out of season.
I credit the rut I’m in to not liking what I’m reading this year as much as last year. In 2023, according to my account on The StoryGraph, my average rating was 3.62 stars out of five. This year, it’s 3.43. It’s not a huge difference and I was honestly expecting it to be bigger, but my point still stands that the books aren’t as good this year.
To encourage myself to read more in 2023, I set up a non-restrictive restriction for myself. The restriction: I could only read books written by women. That rule was honestly great and personally, not that restrictive. I was worried that if I read something written by a man, there would be some mild sexist remarks in the prose that the male brain wouldn’t pick up on, but for me it would ruin my whole reading experience and I would never want to read a book ever again. I probably should’ve kept it that way because I’m reading books by men this year and oof, it’s rough.
As of recently, I’ve felt like I’ve been force-feeding myself books, only to regurgitate them later and become irate that I’ve even consumed such garbage in the first place. Regurgitate meaning making the book I didn’t finish or didn’t like everyone else’s problem. I don’t truly believe everything I don’t enjoy is bad quality, I might be part of the problem as a hater, but at a certain point it’s ridiculous that I can’t find joy in anything I’ve picked up lately.
For example, I have heard so many amazing things about Into Thin Air: A Personal Account Of The Everest Disaster by John Krakaur, specifically that it’s a nonfiction book that reads like fiction because of how unbelievable the blizzard that caused the 1996 Mount Everest disaster was and even without the blizzard, how crazy people have to be to climb Mount Everest in the first place. The concept is so thrilling, but it fully reads like nonfiction. John Krakaur will stop telling the story of his experience on Mount Everest every so often to explain history, which is understandable because the average person is not a mountain climbing or geography expert, but every time it happened it took me out of the main story. I unfortunately lost interest and dropped it. Also, to attempt to hold my interest for longer, I purchased an illustrated edition of the book on Ebay (because I like pretty pictures), but the wrong thing was sent to me. Apparently the illustrated edition is rare, so I probably got scammed.
Audiobooks have been a huge help in my reading journey. Audiobooks are reading, I don’t care what anyone says, but yes they admittedly take less effort. I listen to audiobooks a lot as someone who commutes, and it’s not my ideal reading method, but it gets the job done. Preferably, I love to read an ebook and listen to an audiobook at the same time, while playing a compatible movie score. If you need examples, my best combinations of books and movie scores have been Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones with, you guessed it, the score for the movie adaptation and then The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt with the score of Taxi Driver. This method has been called crazy by friends, but it’s totally immersive and makes it impossible to get distracted. I’ve told my friends my ideal method and been asked if I really like reading. I do like reading! My way is just superior.
I have devised a plan in order to reach my goal of reading 50 books. During the time I’m not writing, working, socializing, or crying, I will be reading. I don’t have a goal for how many pages I’ve read, I’m more focused on the number of books; if I don’t reach 50 I’ll truly feel like I failed. Shorter books, essays (that are loggable on The StoryGraph), and poetry will be my friend.
There’s only one book I’m currently reading that’s part of my plan; this past weekend I picked up a physical copy of If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho and translated by Ann Carson which despite being 397 pages, is actually so short since half of it is in Greek and left there for reference. I’m also trying to listen to/read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain because I’ve never read it; my sudden interest was sparked by wanting to read James by Percival Everett, and I figured I should read the source material first. It wasn’t necessarily a part of my “plan” per se but life just happens. Another book I’ve been trying to finish, but for months, again, not part of the plan, Manic Pixie Egirl by Nate Lemcke. My best friend and I wanted to read it together because it looked bad and she kept getting ads for it on TikTok, but it’s beyond bad to the point that it’s torture. It’s been taking me months to finish. Don’t read it if you respect women and yourself. I didn’t even link it to spare you the terror.
Thoughts on Weightlessness by Ari Drennen will probably be something I pick up next. It’s poetry and only 60 pages, so I could bang it out in an hour or so. How to Build a Fashion Icon: Notes on Confidence by Law Roach, Lifeform by Jenny Slate, and In: A Graphic Novel by Will McPhail are also contenders for the next thing I read.
If anyone can recommend essays, poems, short books, novellas, hell even graphic novels, please tell me about them in the comments! I need to reach 50 books by the end of the year or I’ll feel really really bad and I’ll make it everyone’s problem.
I love your goal, and I do think it’s doable! This was very fun and read in a way that draws the reader in like a good conversation, your style is fantastic!