I don’t think I have much to say about my reading life this year that’s different from years past. I come to the same conclusions every turn around the sun: to have more fun with my reading; to not worry so much about always having something to say about what I read; to trust and welcome my whims and flights of fancy. And at the start of every year, I forget these lessons, and have to spend the following twelve months trying to learn them again. 

So I guess my only hope and resolution for my reading life the coming year would be this: to relearn my lessons early, so that I can better appreciate the stories to come.

Here are some of the stories I appreciated the most in 2023: Continue reading “YEAR IN REVIEW ○ 2023” →

2022 has truly been the definition of a roller coaster year. It began with the ending of a relationship and the beginning of a move to my own place. Halfway through the year I caught the dreaded Plague after avoiding it for so long. Then at the end I got sick with something the tests assure me wasn’t the Plague but it certainly knocked me out like it, making me miss a large part of the holidays with my friends and family. Add to that my general constant struggle with anxiety and… well, it’s been a lot. I don’t need to tell you it’s been a lot. You know it’s been a lot.

How I managed to read close to a hundred books along the way is honestly a mystery to me. I try to not put much stock in challenges or numbers. I use my Goodreads Challenge not as a challenge but, because I am a ridiculous person, as a memento mori instead, plugging into it whatever age I’m going to be that year. It’s not that hard to meet — I’m not that old yet. But I would be lying if I didn’t like looking at those large numbers. That I didn’t like feeling like I Read A Lot Of Books.

But the thing that I learned this reading year is that I really don’t. Yes, I read a lot of books, but I don’t feel like I have much to show for it. I didn’t read many books that blew me away, for one. Most that I read were just okay. Which is perfectly fine — not every book I pick up has to blow me away. I just wish to pick better choices.

It’s the pursuit of comfort, I suppose. I don’t blame myself for going for the familiar and the comfortable, especially not during fickle, precarious times. But a thought I kept coming back to as I reflected on my reading throughout the year was how I read a lot less when I was younger, but how so many of those books form an integral part of my soul now. And how that had less to do with the quality of the books themselves than it did with the quality of the time I spent with them. I didn’t finish a book and immediately jumped on to the next, on that neverending search for serotonin. I finished them, and dwelled on them. Sometimes I even read them again, which I scarcely do these days. I gave them time to become a part of me. This wasn’t a conscious choice on my part. I just didn’t have the resources that I do today, which I guess made me more deliberate with my reading. And much more adventurous, too, as I often went with books that seemed interesting and new and challenging.

Which is all to say that, as far as reading resolutions go for the coming year, this would be the main one: To find some of that magic younger me possessed. To be more deliberate and particular with my reading. To choose quality over quantity, always. 

I believe this in turn would result in better, more thoughtful reviews, too. My poor blog seems to be in a constant state of neglect — not to mention my bookstagram. I always make it a resolution to be better at both, but in particular my website, and that will remain the same for this next year.

Anyway.

I don’t want to give the impression that everything I read this year was a big pile of meh. I still had a lot of fun. Still managed to read some fine books that I hope will form part of my soul in their own way. Some that I have already revisited and plan to do so again. I always make it a point to say that books are my shining beacons of light in this tempestuous world. These were some of my lighthouses in 2022: Continue reading “YEAR IN REVIEW ○ 2022” →

The best I can say for 2021 is that it was certainly A Year. Entirely too much turmoil for my liking, but we made it through, and that’s not nothing. 

I read a great many books in 2021. More than I ever have previously in my life, in fact. A response, I suppose,  to all the rocky happenings in both the world and my own personal life. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stories are my bright, shining beacons in the dark. The warm, safe spaces I seek out when life, the universe, and everything get to be too much. In 2021, things got much too much, and so, naturally, as often as I could, I headed towards the light. Continue reading “YEAR IN REVIEW ○ 2021” →

So 2020 was a year that certainly happened.

I don’t want to write much about the year on a personal level. I used to do that with these reflections, but the last couple of years have been rough, to say the least, both on a personal scale and, you know, a global one, and I find myself with little energy to expound much on the hardships of life at the close of it all. I doubt there’s much I can say that hasn’t already been said by thousands of others, anyway. We’re all passengers on Spaceship Earth after all; we’re all going through the same kind of bedlam.

So I talk about books and stories. It’s the best I can do.

Books are — and they always have been — the beams of light that break through the darkness of any given time period, after all. I can’t think of a better, more appropriate way of saying good riddance to this plague year than by putting forth a small selection of these bright, shining beacons. These talismans against despair. Continue reading “YEAR IN REVIEW ○ 2020” →