Goodreads Reading Challenge

A Year in Books (2023)

I’ve been doing the Goodreads Reading Challenge for 10 years now, and this is the sixth year I’ve successfully met my personal goal of reading 50 books — 52 actually! This year’s statistics, according to Goodreads’ My Year in Books, included 14,328 pages read with an average book length of 276 pages. The shortest book, clocking in at 52 pages, was Marigold and Rose by Louise Glück, and the longest, at 676 pages, was Habibi, a gorgeous graphic novel by Craig Thompson.

Some of my highest rated books, with five stars, were also some of my favorites: From My Button Box: Collected Essays in a Pandemic Time (Judith Bruder), Leaving Time (Jodi Picoult), The Book of Longings (Sue Monk Kidd), The Invisible Hour (Alice Hoffman), Julia and the Shark and The Dance Tree (Kiran Millwood Hargrave), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), The Book of Lost Names (Kristin Harmel), November 9 and Verity (Colleen Hoover), The Paris Library (Janet Skeslien Charles), and Other Birds (Sarah Addison Allen).

For better or for worse, I often find book inspiration from List Challenge, and I am so tempted to consider reading Rory Gilmore’s Reading List or the 100 Books to Read Before You Die or Books to Read to Be Considered Well Read. But I much more prefer wandering the shelves at the library or following breadcrumbs from this book to the next.

My next pile for 2024 includes not so much books as authors. I want to read more Jodi Picoult because we’ve only just met this year. Also Ann Patchett, John Green, and Isabel Allende.

How about you? What have you been reading lately? And what are you looking forward to in 2024?

A Year in Books (2022)

My Year in Books 2020

I must confess, it doesn’t surprise me that this is the first time in five years I did not meet my personal reading goal of 50 books. There were long stretches of time in 2020 when sitting still was next to impossible, nevermind tasks that required focus and attention-spans.

Which is not to say I wasn’t reading at all or didn’t have a stack of books at the ready. There was always an active book or two — bookmarks holding my place until I returned — and a patient pile of bookshelf finds, Amazon impulses, and contactless library pick-ups sitting in wait.

At some point, I was able to settle back into a fairly regular reading habit — all 10,466 pages of 40 books according to Goodreads’ annual “My Year in Books” report (see below). At some point, I even slogged through The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt), only because I was determined to read the book before watching the movie.

As usual, my annual accounting of reads is a hodgepodge: old favorites, some young adult novels, poetry, a few lifestyle/inspiration books, and plenty of escapist fiction.

My favorites of the year? Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens), The World That We Knew (Alice Hoffman), and The Conference of the Birds (Ransom Riggs).

My least favorite titles didn’t make the list, because I’ve implemented the Page 29 Rule which gives me permission to put down a book sooner rather than later.

I think it’s funny that I began this long, hard year reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh) and The Book of Speculation (Erika Swyler), and ended with Bryan Washington’s Memorial, about findings oneself at a crossroads.

Aren’t we all at some kind of crossroads, here at the end of 2020?

The good thing is that there will always be books. Come what may, there will always be that patient pile waiting for us, that bookmark holding a sacred space for when we return, the character who grabs our hand and says come with me for a while…and we do.

Happy New Year and Happy Reading.