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 had the book that sparked that readolution. But some of those goals still felt relevant (a few belong to a different reader): so I began these “failed” projects again. (Plenty had succeeded, but some niggled.)
Some required small sessions of reading over a long period of time. (Like Ibram X. Kendi’s book and Lorna Sage’s and Ruth Padel’s.) That works for me with short stories but I’ve struggled to do that with longer works, so it was good to have a few like this underway: it started to feel normal to read just a chapter in a book each month (or, each week).
(2023 included 201 books)
And all of that went well, and underscored the idea that, simply because you haven’t managed to do something you wanted to do once, doesn’t mean you can’t try it again and come through.
Where I didn’t meet other, current, goals, I was “close enough” or got thinking about why not. It doesn’t trouble me that I read only 18 of the 20 books published before 2000 that I’d planned on. And it raised interesting questions about how we think of backlist and classic, recent and new. One list of options resulted in only one book read, but I read so many other books that fit the category (but weren’t specified) that I was content; I made a new list of options for 2025.
I fell short of reading the classics I’d intended to read, but this new trick of realising that I need to change my idea of normal before it starts to feel normal to do something I’ve resisted is going to solve that. Will it? Really? Is it even the same thing? Just because reading more long books in short segments started to feel normal, will reading prose that’s a hundred or two hundred years old (while mostly reading contemporary lit) start to feel normal? Or, will I just find new reasons to avoid these classics? Or, will I just change my definition of a classic to convince myself that I’m actually reading more classics after all? But that’s what I’m going to try, keeping a classic or two in the stack at all times, so I don’t ever fully shift out of that gear. (Cue: discussion about what constitutes a classic.)
But maybe I don’t even know how to choose a good goal. Last year various reading friends would have heard me back-channel bitching about how bleak a certain book was or how long it was taking me to read through a particular author’s backlist. So depressing. Too depressing. So violent. Too violent. So smart. Too smart. I had to learn the word for snow-plow in French because one author killed off a character by hitting her with one (and then the story got dark). More kvetching. I researched the Stockyards neighbourhood in Toronto and learned about the slaughterhouse industry. Still more complaints.
And both those experiences are among my 2024 stand-outs. Occasionally aggravating and overwhelming, Kev Lambert’s and Colin McAdam’s books are lodged permanently in my mind. I spent hours reading and rereading the very passages that troubled me. And there were other books with unforgettable tragedies at their core—by Siamak Herawi and Shokoofeh Azar—that made me cry, but still beckon to be reread (Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s too).
Would it be a better goal to seek out bleak and sorrowful tales? If these are among the highlights of my reading year, why isn’t “more of that” my goal?
Of course it’s not that simple, because others were hard-hitting and still entertaining along the way, like Dmitri Nasrallah’s Hotline, Comrade Papa by GauZ’, and Kiley Reid’s Come & Get It. Katherine Jones’ playful structure with her biography of Katherine Mansfield left me wanting to read about every topic she’s researched. And short stories like Richard Kelly Kemick’s and Alison Graves’ reminded me why the form is among my favourites (although I once loved only novels).
So this year I am choosing to begin again, but in a different way. This past year’s reading was so rewarding—from stop to start, the bits I complained about and the bits I revelled in—that I can only hope 2025’s reading is that satisfying. (There are a few more stat’s at the bottom of my Summary page, if anyone’s craving those.) With a similar sense of curiosity and resolve, I’m eager to see what’s ahead: more about that tomorrow.
It sounds like 2024 was a fruitful and enlightening reading experience for you. May it remain so! I love that 60% of your authors are authors of color.
Reading long books in small chunks it something I am working on this year. Same for short story/essay/poetry collections. I’m determined not to try and plow through them, no matter how long it takes. Makes the reading experience so much richer/less annoying. For so long I tried to treat them like fast-paced novels and gobble them up and it didn’t work.
Thanks, Laila. So far, my stack this year, of all those slow-reads and a few new projects all underway at once…well, it’s rather chaotic. But I think it’s only a matter of adjusting, getting used to a new ebb and flow. And maybe it only seems chaotic because everything has slowed down the past couple of weeks so I’m not reading as much as usual either. It’s been ages since I actually finished a book!
Kev Lambert’s books have a way of sticking in your brain and it makes me want to read more. What will he write about next?!
I followed your link to more stats and I love the 14 year graph – so cool!
Snow and video games? hee hee
Thank you! Every year I forget how to add the new year’s data. /snorts
There’s that mention of the Kemick book again – it’s a sign I need to pick it up! I’m always in aw of the amount of books you read. People used to always be so impressed by my 100 books a year, but your 200 a year are almost incomprehensible to some people haha You are my inspiration for when I’m retired, I’ll see if I can get to 200 books in one year.
I actually hit one of my new goals for this year – I’m finally listening to an audiobook for the first time ever! It’s Britney Spears’ memoir and it’s juicy, so very easy listening. It’s actually forced me out walkign during my lunch break so I can just pop in my ear buds and listen, so I’m learning to build in ways of reading into my life which is a good feeling
He has a tidy and purposeful website, which includes links to other work online, including a story from this new collection in Numéro Cinq (in English, in case that name suggests otherwise) online. As soon as I saw the title, I remembered exactly what happens in that story: it’s one of those.
Haha, I think it’s hilarious that you will always remember this as your first audiobook! But, it’s true, sometimes we have to find an “in” for new habits and enjoying the experience will help secure it. Naomi will have plenty of great suggestions for Canadian audio listening, if the habit sticks!
Yes, Anne – I will! I also remember getting into it felt a bit shaky, but I’ve finally worked my way up to audio fiction and I’m so excited about it!
I don’t do reading goals at all as you probably know. I have rules of thumb which don’t really change, and which really just reflect my reading preferences. I would like to have a reading project eg complete a certain author or focus on something like Bill’s Africa project last year but I know it would just stress me.
All this said, I have had one little reading project over the last two years though and I am continuing that idea. It was reading the Native American short story anthology my friend gave me. I finished that late last year and have just started the African American one she sent me a year ago. I love doing this, so I might continue picking off anthologies like that in between my other reading. I have a third waiting in the wings, already!
True, I’m not surprised to hear it, but others here might be new to your approach/thinking on goals.
And of course I think your short story project is terrific. (I’m also very curious about your third option, but I can imagine it will be a long time coming, so you can build suspense, and likely accumulate some other options in the meantime. heheh) Have you thought about sharing the TOC in your collection, even just in a photograph? I might have the odd story on hand.
It’s funny how sometimes it is those aggravating reads that stay with you the most! But I guess that’s one of the reasons we read – to be moved in some way – even if it’s a less-than-positive emotion!
Both writers are concerned with/intrigued by social behaviours, so there’s that delightful sense of reading along with the story and enjoying the characters and suddenly realising there’s a whole ‘other layer simmering beneath that is bolstering the story. I love that. (Also, at times, I hated it.)
When you are surprised by your reading is the best!
Sometimes a snow plow is simply a snow plow (says the Ontarian to the Minnesotan). Whenever something emerges from the drift, and there’s that sense of “I need to reread this”, it’s exciting for sure.
That’s quite a total! Mine was 153 – I’m reading a bit less since we both retired but I’m happy with that. ‘Curiosity and resolve’ are good watchwords, reading and other wise.
Gone are the days when Rebecca and I would be jostling with our EOY totals. heheh But I was surprised to find I’d read 30 more this year. The poetry, manga, and romances in my stack likely explain the variance between our totals (at least, I don’t think those are categories you often explore, and they read relatively quickly).
Sounds like a pretty great reading year all-in-all, despite a little kvetching along the way…
I am so going to steer clear of what a classic is! 😉
But I am going to steal your word readolution. They do have a way of going like their near-cousin resolutions.
I really have no complaints, so many great reads and bookish conversations.
But you read a lot of them, so… LOL Yeah, that probably only makes it harder, rather than easier, to define.
In turn, I learned that word from an old BBS about books, and lost touch with all those readers so many years ago that I can’t even ask if anyone remembers who used it there.
231 books! Do you read for work or are these books all read during your free time?
So you learnt the word chasse-neige, huh? Next time you learn new technical words in French, think of me and all the fly-fishing vocabulary I learnt in spite of me! 🙂
The snow gets hunted! That’s fun.
Noooo, it was the opposite of fun. LOL (But I know what you mean.)
LOL That has crossed my mind about your English reads. One of my earliest French reads was a collection of Sagan short stories including one about hunting. I did not KNOW those words (and did not want to either heheh). That’s why I have avoided reading mysteries/suspense in French, too (also for fear of missing a “clue” along the way), although we read a little Maigret in school. (Much of my reading is required for work, although I read only in evenings and on weekends: that adds up for sure!)
A sense of curiosity and resolve is a lovely approach – I’m going to steal that and use it as my own goal too! I hope you have a rewarding year’s reading ahead 🙂
Heheh Feel free! I’m looking forward to catching up with your posts this week.
I followed your lead in reading multiple books at once, and found I didn’t like it. I lost track of characters and plots. I got to the end of books, eg. Toni Morrison’s Love, but then I had to find a plot summary to remind me how it started. I wasn’t happy with that and I’d rather be immersed in one book at a time. (Though I seem to be able to keep devices separate in my head – as I generally have one book on the go on each device).
My father tended to buy me old-fashioned books so I find nineteenth century writing quite ‘normal’, though I also enjoy 20th and 21st century experimental writing, but standard contemporary writing not so much.
I can’t advise you on your goals, though I am sure we will read some books at the same time. If I read a hundred plus books again this year then I can probably identify fewer than 20 of them in advance, though perhaps more by category – Australian men, Black African, North American Black and First nations, and I’m sure, some white Canadian women.
Of course I don’t have your ‘problem’ of having to read/do background reading for new-release reviews.
To be fair, trying it around the holidays would have been the most stressful circumstances (only in terms of available time and focus, not that your time with family is stressful). If you’re able to compartmentalise different books on different media, I think you would be able to adapt to four different literary novels in a quieter time of year, but I also believe that dedicating oneself to a single book has its own charm and appeal. If I wasn’t such a moody reader, I don’t think I would choose to read so many books “at one time”.
We have had so many great shared reads in 2024, whether thematic (African nations, the UKLG prize, etc.) or specific titles and I’m definitely looking forward to more of that. I had some edits to complete that I’d expected would be finished in 2024 that were held over, which hasn’t helped my sense of 2025’s delayed “arrival”, but now that’s all tidied up. Our reading of Cather’s One of Ours was a great reminder of how enjoyable it can be to read classics, and my start into Charlotte Smith (which faltered, but only due to its being a heavy hardcover).
My goals are in conflict there; I enjoy reading backlists, but the bulk of my work has been revolving around contemporary writing and current releases. It’s a #niceproblemtohave however.