I have watched a handful of episodes of The Twilight Zone. The one I connect to the most is Time Enough at Last. You know the one I am talking about, right? The one where the one with the guy who never has the time he needs to read all the books he wants? Well, that’s me.
Like everything I do, I read in extremes. I either read a book in a day, read six books at once, or go weeks without reading. In addition to this, I want to read a lot of books. I have a spreadsheet with over three hundred books I want to read. I also have a collection of other reading lists all over the place. Then when I go to book stores, I pick up books I have never heard of that I almost never read but add to those lists.
Throughout the year, I add as many as I can to the list and get caught up in all of them then feel the need to race through the books I should be reading, counting down the pages until I am done so I can start the next one.
I think this is my English major days coming back to haunt me. But this is also part of a broader problem. Countless influencers and people we consider “successful” post and talk about how they read 100 books per year.
How?
Then you continue and find out many of them count the books they started and abandoned because it didn’t hook them.
My reading habits
I read a lot. Sometimes. Like everything, I am either reading a book in a day, six books at a time, or not reading for weeks. Last year, while working on my thesis and keeping up with classes, I finished 34 books. They were a combination of academic, research, and fun books. There are other years where I reached closer to fifty, even though I was not counting.
I have a spreadsheet with over three hundred books I want to read and a variety of other reading lists. There is no way I can get through all of these books, especially when we consider how many new books there are per year.
That being said, I am trying, instead, to pre-select a list of books to read each year. This year, I have limited myself to twelve books that I will get through this year that are not anthropology, project, or hobby related. I am considering doing a separate project theme each month where I might read subject-specific books in addition to this list. I will create a separate list of general anthropology books I want to read this year.
My Reading List for 2021 (in no particular order)
- Sunday Sketching by Christoph Niemann
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
- On Writing Well by William Zinsser
- Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger
- Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
- Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms by Shellye Archambeau
- Think like an Artist by Will Gompertz
- Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
- On Photography by Susan Sontag
I Will Certainly Read More
I will read probably around 40-50 books this year. I have recently given up my Netflix addition. I am about two months out, and I am hoping it will stick this time. I figure, the more I read, the easier it will be to stick with this since I enjoy reading more anyway.
I am currently in a combined read-a-book-in-a-day and read-six-books-at-a-time phase. I started a book last night and almost finished it, but I am also reading four other books and just picked up two new ones I am looking to start.
I have a long way to go in getting my reading to a more manageable, calm state. I too need to start being more selective about what books enter my life.
My goal is to reach a point of having a list of books to read for the year with some room for recommendations or random ones I pick up. I want to be more intentional with what I read rather than just add books to my shelves because I may someday read them. I want to prioritize books that can add the most value to that moment in my life. I also want to read from different genres—which will be explored in my upcoming monthly themes.
But for now, these are the books I am committing to getting through in 2021.
I did a similar exercise for 2020.
Pretty sure I only made it through three of those books and picked a whole new selection as I went along. So we’ll see how I do this year.