I’ve participated in the Goodreads Reading Challenge every year since 2014.
That’s a tidy, fancy phrase for something much simpler. Every year, I decide how many books I hope to read, and I try to meet myself there.
Before that, during school and university, reading wasn’t a goal so much as a constant. I don’t have a record of how many books I read, but between assigned texts and the books I sought out on my own, I was probably reading forty to fifty books a year without much effort. Reading was woven into my days, not something I had to justify or schedule.
After school, I started my own business, and my attention shifted. Work demanded more of me, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, reading began to slip to the margins. Looking back now, the pattern feels obvious. The number of books I read in any given year became a quiet barometer of my inner life. Years filled with books meant my work was sustainable. Years with very few books meant work was crowding out most other things.
For a long time, I was also careless about keeping track. If a book wasn’t on my Kindle, it often didn’t make it to my Goodreads record. Over the years, I’ve become more intentional about that.
Last year, I made sure every book I read was documented, not that I read much. Learning how to be a parent has a way of rearranging everything.
This year feels like a turning point. For the first time in more than a decade, I’ve set a reading goal higher than the familiar twenty to thirty books. This year, the goal is fifty two.
It’s part of a larger intention I’ve set for myself, to live well, with the word persist as my word of the year. Not in the sense of grinding through, but in the sense of returning, again and again, to the things that make life feel spacious and alive.
I also have a backlog. Over the years, I’ve gathered a pile of unread books, both digital and physical. Books I bought with excitement. Books I imagined future versions of myself settling into. So part of this year’s practice is turning toward what I already have, trusting that abundance doesn’t always require acquisition, even if I know I won’t resist every new title that catches my eye.
For me, reading exists in a middle place. It is both a luxury and a necessity.
It’s a luxury because my life feels full, and reading now requires intention. It asks for time that must be claimed, protected, and revisited regularly. It doesn’t sneak into the cracks of my days the way it once did.
It’s a necessity because reading is directly tied to how joyful, steady, and generative I feel. It gives texture to my thinking and depth to my days. Music comes close, but its effects are fleeting. Books linger. They settle into you. They reshape how you notice things, how you name experiences, how you understand yourself and others.
Words take up residence in the small, unlit corners of the mind, illuminating places you didn’t realize were waiting for light.
Reading fills me in a way nothing else quite does.
So this year, I want to fill my cup deliberately and generously. I want stories to return to my daily life, not as an escape, but as nourishment. I want reading to be less of an aspiration and more of a rhythm, a steady presence that accompanies me through the ordinary and the profound alike.
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