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.
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.
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.
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.
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 🙂
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.