2023 reading wrap-up / 2024 preview

For me 2023 was a year of ups and downs, both in my reading journey and personally. In the former there were more ups than downs; indeed, some of the ups there helped with the downs in the latter. I don’t wish to dwell on my personal life in this post, so let’s get to the reading.

What went well

I’ve come a long way since the end of 2021, when I realized I’d hardly read anything that year. Was I truly a reader, as I believed myself to be, if I read so infrequently? I resolved to do better in 2022. While 2022 was a reading year of fits and starts, and I fell short of some of my reading goals, the improvement compared to 2021 was undeniable.

As 2023 kicked off, I set the same goal I had set for myself (and not met) in 2022: read 25 books. I realize this is a drop in the bucket compared to some, but it’s still roughly double the American average, which is an average that is declining further still. Also, I am proud to announce that I beat my goal, logging 36 books in 2023!

These books include a mix of genres and eras. I kicked off the year with The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel and finished with A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Other reading highlights include Notes of Native Son by James Baldwin (who needs no introduction), and Adventures in Immediate Irreality by Max Blecher. Although Blecher’s book was published in the 1930s, it’s surprisingly fresh to contemporary readers. More people should know about it.

I also resolved to read more poetry in 2023, which I did, going so far as to read a poetry collection every day in the month of August. This inspired me to take a poetry class, which in turn inspired me to stick to reading and appreciating poetry for the time being.

What can be improved

Falling on my face as a poet is a good transition into some of the things that didn’t go so well for me in reading this year. An obvious one is that my Shakespeare project got derailed. I’ll say more about that in the 2024 preview.

One thing that went OK for a while but eventually fizzled out was taking Ray Bradbury’s suggestion of reading a poem, a short story, and an essay every single day. He suggested doing this for 1000 days. I lasted a little less than five months. While I understand the value of building habits daily, trying to do all that on top of my other reading led to me cutting corners. At that point I figured if I was trying to game the system, I needed a different system. Indeed, I have an idea about how to rekindle at least the spirit of that challenge. Stay tuned.

I also picked up a few classics that I didn’t finish, most prominently, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It wasn’t even because I didn’t enjoy the book! Unfortunately, around the halfway mark, my work schedule turned very erratic for a few months. This is probably what interfered with the Shakespeare project, too.

Work schedule issues aside, what went wrong here? I think a big part of it was a lack of planning and accountability. There isn’t a ton I can do about accountability, since nobody’s making me do this, but planning is definitely something I can fix. Indeed, I have laid out at least the bones of my reading schedule for 2024.

2024 preview

You might guess from the previous section that I have a more solid plan of my 2024 reading here, and you’re right. I won’t reveal it in detail here, in part because I’ve also left room for flexibility. I don’t want to schedule every single thing I read a year in advance. Surely books will come out in the coming year that interest me.

For example, Percival Everett has a new book scheduled to come out in March, called James, which is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the escaped slave, Jim. You might know Everett as the author of Erasure, the 2001 novel that serves as the basis for the recent film American Fiction, which I also recommend checking out. You’d better believe I’m going to read James once it’s available.

My numeric goal for 2024 is the same as what I achieved in 2023: 36 books. I toyed with the idea of aiming for 52, but I like to savor my reading, and I’m not sure I can do that with a substantially faster pace than what I’m doing now.

Regarding the failed Bradbury experiment, I’m trying my own version: rotate every month between full collections of poetry, short stories, and essays. To that end, I can announce that my collection for January 2024 will be Romanian Stories, a collection of short stories by various Romanian authors.

On a related note, I resolve to complete the challenge I set for myself at the beginning of 2022 in 2024 (better late than never!). I actually have several books in the can for that—I just need to write up my thoughts about them and post them here. Look for at least an update on that in early 2024.

Finally, I am treating this year’s Shakespeare challenge like a course that I have flunked and must therefore repeat from the beginning. And from a selfish standpoint, I want to be able to say I’ve read all of his works! Any posts on previously discussed material will not result in repeated content here—if I feel the need to discuss those works again, I’ll do so from a different angle.

So how was your reading experience in 2023? What reading goals do you have for 2024? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!