This year I am trying to read more deliberately whimsically. Go ahead and giggle, I know it’s ridiculous. Over the course of a reading lifetime, I’ve allowed some reading habits that I enjoyed to fall away, like reading with the seasons in mind. Like resolving to read something
On the second-last page of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders explains that writing the book turned out to be a chance to ask himself “again” and “at length” this question: “Do you still want to devote your life to fiction?” Spoiler: he does.
Abi-Nakhoul, Atwood, Brinkley, Graves, Kemick, Nunez, Segal Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to three familiar writers and also explored four new-to-me story writers.
Some people put a lot of stock into their first read of the year, selecting it as a reflection of the coming year’s goals, like other people choose a word (or words) to represent the year ahead. Partly because I’m a moody reader, with an unwieldly stack including many
Simmering beneath all my 2024 goals was the idea of choosing to begin again, and choosing goals that mattered for ages—didn’t dissipate in an instant of good intentions. Reading lists I’d excitedly assembled decades ago, with specific books or authors scribbled into notebooks, were neglected. Often I no longer
