A tentative goal I set for myself in 2018 was to read the equivalent of a book a week. It only became a firm goal in November, when it appeared possible to meet the goal of 52 books so long as I was very strategic in my reading for the final weeks of the year. To get there, I was somewhat permissive with the criteria: 'book' is used somewhat loosely, as I include my dissertation (which I did read straight through in January for proofreading purposes but is not, strictly speaking, a book), a Dutch chapter book for children, etc. Still, I stand by all of these in my count. As far as 'reading' is concerned, the criteria were 1) that I read each of these books in their entirety, and 2) that I finished them at some point in 2018. However, I began many of these books before 2018, but I see this rather as a bonus: in many cases this goal was the motivation I needed to finish some of the dozens of books I began during my PhD and hadn't gotten through.
It's worth noting that this would never have been possible if I had been working full time the entire year, which I haven't been. This makes me wonder about the goals I set for myself, even the tentative ones, as this goal was set with the assumption that I would be working full time all year. Here are all of the books I read, in roughly chronological order of when each was finished: JANUARY 1. We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-nehisi Coates (non-fiction) 2. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (fiction) 3. Moby Dick, (not the Melville original, but a child's chapter book in Dutch, around 80 pp.) (in Dutch) 4. 'Not Lawn, nor Pasture, nor Mead': Rewilding & The Cultural Landscape, Andrea R. Gammon (my dissertation, philosophy, re-read) 5. The Homecoming, Harold Pinter (play) FEBRUARY 6. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (fiction, re-read) MARCH 7. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain (fiction) 8. Mountain Language, Harold Pinter (play) APRIL 9. Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Høeg (fiction) 10. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (fiction) MAY 11. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle (fiction, audiobook, re-read) 12. The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston (philosophy) 13. Midaq Alley, Naguib Mafouz (fiction) 14. When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi (non-fiction) 15. Upstream, Mary Oliver (non-fiction) 16. How to Sharpen Pencils, David Rees (non-fiction) JUNE 17. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (fiction, audiobook) JULY 18. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (fiction, graphic novel) 19. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (fiction, audiobook, re-read) 20. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (fiction) 21. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (fiction) AUGUST 22. The Unvanquished, William Faulkner (fiction) 23. The Italian Girl, Iris Murdoch (fiction) 24. Motherhood, Sheila Heti (fiction) 25. Rabbit, Run, John Updike (fiction) 26. The Sellout, Paul Beatty (fiction) 27. Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neill (non-fiction) SEPTEMBER 28. Street Haunting, Virginia Woolf (fiction) 29. Mysteries, Knut Hamsun (fiction) 30. Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh (fiction) 31. The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch (philosophy) 32. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami (non-fiction, re-read) 33. Winter Mythologies & Abbots, Pierre Michon (fiction) 34. Just Kids, Patti Smith (non-fiction) 35. The Odyssey, Homer (Trans. Lombardo) (poetry) OCTOBER 36. A Personal Matter, Kenzaburō Ōe (fiction) 37. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones (fiction, audiobook) 38. There But For The, Ali Smith (fiction) NOVEMBER 39. Hotel Du Lac, Anita Brookner (fiction) 40. Traveling with Hermes, Bruce Krajewski (philosophy) DECEMBER 41. Morality, An Introduction Bernard Williams (philosophy) 42. Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis (fiction) 43. Nostalgia: When Are We Ever at Home?, Barbara Cassin (philosophy) 44. Mawdrew Czgowchwz, James McCourt (fiction) 45. Prometheus Earthbound: Technological Being on an Unsettled Planet, Jochem Zwier (dissertation, philosophy) 46. The Old Ways, Robert MacFarlane (memoir) 47. Religion in the Anthropocene, collected volume, edited by Deane-Drummond, Bergmann, & Vogt (philosophy & theology) 48. Everything Under, Daisy Johnson (fiction) 49. Return to my Native Land, Aimé Césaire (Trans. Bostock & Berger) (poetry) January 2019 50. Chernobyl Prayer, Svetlana Alexievich (non-fiction) 51. Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne (philosophy) 52. Heidegger's Ways, Hans-Georg Gadamer (philosophy)
0 Comments
|
ArchivesCategories |