Reading is Fundamental

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I set a goal to read 52 books during the last twelve months and I completed that goal with a few weeks to spare. Prior to this my reading habit had really fallen off – I think I read about five books in 2021. To make it more interesting I made the arbitrary decision that I wouldn’t reread anything. I have several favorite books and series that I can fall into comfortably and that felt like cheating for some reason. This resulted in reading a lot of books I may not have normally picked up, including more nonfiction than I usually read (by which I mean I read some nonfiction). A few of the books were audio books and a few of the books were read aloud with the rest of the family, but they all counted.

Setting a goal to read everyday for on hour (which at some point turned into reading at least 30 minutes) and measuring the reading using the Bookly app really helped, but after I got to my fifty-second book I quit using the app and I broke my streak of reading every day at 330 days. I like the data, but it is locked in the phone app so I can only use their views of the data, and also it did get annoying to remember to record my reading. It started to feel like my reading didn’t count if it wasn’t recorded – anyone who tracks their fitness activities can probably relate. And breaking the streak meant I didn’t have to stress about reading every day which sometimes meant reading from 11:30pm to midnight to make sure I got it in under the wire.

Not all of the books were great reads, but I remember each one and looking over all of the covers pictured in this post is like reliving the last year. I can picture where I was when I was reading a book and what was happening in my life. I wrote reviews for a few of them during the fifty-two days of blogging. I listened to the audio books during my fifty-two days of running. Most of these were physical books, but I always had at least one e-book that I was reading so that if I had some down time with my phone, or forgot to bring a book on a trip, I could get in my reading for the day. I would also usually read one of the e-books for a bit during my lunch breaks on my long bike rides.

I don’t have a reading goal for the next year, but I do have a large pile of to-be-read books. Also now that my year of new books is over there are some old favorites I want to revisit. My reading has slowed down since I hit the goal and I have gone several days at a time without picking up a book, but I have finished two books in the last month which feels like a good pace for the coming year.

If you have good book recommendations feel to leave them in the comments.

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And just to create a loop here is the short video I uploaded about this blog post – (the books in the video aren’t the ones I read because many of those have been packed already)