My Quest to Read 100 Books in a Year (Again)
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reading, a love story
I have always been a voracious reader. That is, once I started reading.
In kindergarten, my teacher did not believe in forcing kids to start reading and operated under the perspective that they’d learn it when they were developmentally ready. The science supports this, but many parents and schools still feel the need to push kids along. For most of my youth, I was the youngest (or one of the youngest) kids in my grade so yeah, I was not ready to read in kindergarten.
After kindergarten, we moved to a new city, and I started first grade in a school that competitively pushed kids to read in kindergarten. They won prizes for reading more books. Talk about destroying a love of reading for reading’s sake! I was in the lowest level reading group, though fortunately I did not know that until a few years later and pieced things together!
By fourth grade, my teacher encouraged independent reading and required that each student write a miniature book report on an index card. The same teacher would read out loud to the class every day after lunch, my favorite time of the day. Except for the day we got to that part of Where the Red Fern Grows. That trauma aside, it was around this age that I can say I truly found my love of reading. While other kids moaned and groaned about having to read books to write their reports, I began knocking books out one after another, insatiable. Because we kept our book reports on index cards in a little box, the kind people use for recipe boxes (if such a thing still exists!), I remember one trouble maker in the class noticing that I’d written reports on 40-50 books (the exact number eludes me after all this time) and started saying how I was lying because no one could have read that much. It was only then that I flipped through and saw that others had read no more than ten.
In middle school, I pulled out whatever book I was reading at the time and read through class probably at least one period a day. I only ever had a teacher ask me to put the book away a time or two. I was mortified when my 7th grad science teacher said to me, “You’re probably learning more about science in that book than in this class.” (I was reading Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel’s pre-historic epic tale . . . with some racy - and controversial - sex scenes.)
As a liberal arts major in college, I read like it was my job, which it essentially was. And then. Graduation came and went, adult life started, and my reading dried up.
There was a moment one day where I realized and said out loud - if I don’t intentionally prioritize reading, I could easily just never do it. This was that period in life where you realize you are actually an adult and fully responsible for your own decisions. No one is making you do anything. What had started as reading for enjoyment had become reading for coursework, and I had to decide what sort of reader I wanted to be as an adult.
Over the years, I have had years where I have read a lot - in 2021, I exceeded my goal of 100 books by reading 103 - and there have been years where I set a goal of 25 and didn’t even read 20. I am absolutely about quality over quantity in my reading so no matter what goal I set, I don’t purposefully pick short books or easy reads just to hit the goal. The goal of the goal is simply to keep reading a priority in my life.
I have always made a point of reading a lot of the so-called classics that I didn’t read in school. A few years ago, I realized I was way too geographically limited in my reading and so purposefully targeted international authors. And more recently, I have been enjoying Advanced Reading Copies of books, getting exposed to authors and ideas that I likely would not have come across elsewhere.
a different technique to tackle 100 books in 2023
In the past, I have just focused on reading and pick up whatever comes my way, but I’m trying something different in 2023 to be more intentional in what I’m reading. I’ve made a list of books (nerd alert: in Excel) and types of books that will make up the list of 100 and have focused on these categories:
Finish them already! I have 11 books currently in progress or which I started and put back down. This habit of mine drives me nuts, so my goal is to finish them up! These are a mix of classical fiction, contemporary fiction, and non-fiction.
Books to inspire and inform our travels - I try to make a point of reading books about or set in places we plan on visiting or have visited. I’ve identified 12 books set in or about places we will visit in 2023 and 5 books set in places we have already been.
World literature - No better way to expand your horizons from home than reading literature from those with vastly different lived experiences. I classify authors who are non-US and non-European in this bucket and have targeted 10 novels.
Advanced Reading Copies - I’ve enjoyed getting exposed to both fiction and non-fiction that I likely wouldn’t have come across other than skimming through the ARC options. I plan on reading 11 in this category.
The “Classics” - I plan on tackling 10 this year.
The Nightstand Pile - Most readers have a pile of books that keep stacking up. I have 10 in queue and plan on getting through them this year.
Free for All - This still leaves about 30 spots for whatever piques my interest along the way so that this more intentional approach isn’t unintentionally limiting
I know the final list will vary from what I’ve set out with at this point simply because some of the books may not be available through the library, which is where I try to get the bulk of my books, but I’m curious to see whether approaching my reading this way yields a different outcome.
For those among you who also set reading goals, I’m curious what approach others take - please share your tips and tricks in the comments section!
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