Mark Llobrera

Reading Log, 2018

Published in #books, #reading-log

For the last couple of years I’ve kept a record of the books I finished in a year (you can see 2017 here). For 2018 I had a few simple goals in mind:

Here’s the list, in the order in which I finished each book:

In all, I finished 70 books this year, which was way above my goal. It helps that my commute is via train — four days out of the week, I ride SEPTA in to Fishtown, Philadelphia. It turns out that with a little bit of discipline I can hammer out a bunch of pages.

I read 51 books by women and/or people of color. (This assumes that Elena Ferrante is a woman, and not a pen name for a white man).

To make room for reading I had to make a few adjustments. My schedule didn’t change much, so it was more about shifting the makeup of my media consumption — I spent less time on Twitter and social media, and I also watched fewer movies and TV shows.

I read a mix of ebooks and paper books. My general pattern was: ebooks for reading on my commute, paper books at home. That meant I was usually juggling two (sometimes three) books at a time.

What’s next? For 2019 I’m less fixated on the volume of books. There were times where I felt good about tearing through my reading stack, but at times it felt a little bit like racing through a meal without really savoring it. This year my goal is to dig a little bit deeper and gather a bit more data about my reading, like the date I started a book and finished (or abandoned) it. I also want to record my notes and impressions instead of just logging titles.