Book logging
This year I got rid of my Goodreads account and started logging books in a journal. Someone I know with experience in the book world suggested that one day I might be meeting the people whose books I was assigning stars. Perhaps it was better to celebrate rather than critique?
It seemed like good advice, so I bought myself a copy of My Reading Life, a fill-in-the-blank reading log designed by Anne Bogel. I followed her guidance on how to use the many lists and ranking tools, and I’ll be damned if I haven’t had a challenging and satisfying reading year!
Keeping a log for my eyes only has helped me read wider and less self-consciously. Also, I think having a physical list made me read more books and finish more books. I tend to start a lot of books but not always finish.
Anne, who runs a book blogging site called Modern Mrs. Darcy and hosts the What Should I Read Next podcast, is so detail-oriented and enthusiastic about My Reading Year that she recorded an entire podcast to explain its features. Is it overboard with granular details? Yes. Is it for minimalists? Maybe not. But her enthusiasm is infectious, and after a year, I’m still using it at least twice a month or so. Read all about it on the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog.
Oh, and she also has a version for kids. I just ordered a copy for Liz! We’ll see if she actually uses it.
Stated goals vs. reality
I’m sure I meant it at the time, but the books I rated with perfect five stars are actually, uh, heavy. You’ll see what I mean.
NONFICTION five star reads
Well, well, I *do* like nonfiction, but only if it’s written by women (and Dave Chang). Okay, noted!
Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway fiction craft
Voice Lessons for Parents by Wendy Mogel flexible parenting
How to Fight Antisemitism by Bari Weiss contemporary hate
Dining In by Alison Roman fabulous hosting
That Sounds So Good by Carla Lalli Music tasty veggies
Stasiland by Anna Funder East German hell
The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louis Perry contrarian feminism
Cooking at Home by Dave Chang and Priya Krishna boil a chicken!
The Unspeakable by Meghan Daum essays by my dream bestie
FICTION five star reads
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder kosher lesbian erotica
This Must be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell family escape fantasy
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell grief and love’s marriage
King Richard II by William Shakespeare …and now doth time waste me.
Austerlitz by WG Sebald survivor’s despair
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie hardest book I’ve ever read
Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard intergenerational drift
Fiction by men, nonfiction by women?
I kind of love this pattern. I wonder what it would be like to read all nonfiction by men and all fiction by women. Probably a different experience altogether. Or perhaps I’m drawn to heterodoxy…the woman who writes like a man and the man who writes like a woman. I was raised by a woman with only brothers and a man with only sisters. They had a lot of experiences that didn’t quite match up with other families. Ah, me!
Lightness vs. profundity
So I went into 2022 asking for lightness and I left it having read about the Holocaust, the spectre of modern anti-semitism, and novels about immigrants in England, collective guilt in post-war Germany, and an irredeemably narcissistic king.
On the other hand, I read cookbooks! :)
xoxo Jess