I used to read a lot as a kid, and through high school into college. I was the kind of reader that had six or seven or ten books on the go at a time, and I read whenever I could – eating, before bed, at cafes. When I got my first job teaching, my first adult job that consumed so much of my time and attention, I slowed down on reading significantly, although I listened to quite a few audiobooks on my one hour commute, which in many ways saved my sanity.
After we opened the shop, though, and shortly after I had Caleb, everything recreational dropped off completely, and it was only after one or two years of getting adjusted to life with a baby that I started to pick up reading again.
This year, I made a goal to read 52 books. It’s not quite the end of the year, but even with some generous rounding, I don’t think it’s optimistic for me reaching that goal. I may make it to 39 or 40 with the books I’m reading now.
- Kiran Desai – The Inheritance of Loss
- Michael Pollan – In Defense of Food
- Rob Dunn – The Wild Life of our Bodies
- Wally Lamb – We Are Water
- Anne Tyler – A Spool of Blue Thread
- Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
- Anne Tyler – Noah’s Compass
- Jonathan Franzen – Freedom
- Joseph Heller – Catch-22
- Emily St. John Mandel – Station Eleven
- Emma Donoghue – Frog Music
- Andre Dubus III – House of Sand and Fog
- Barbara Kingsolver – Flight Behavior
- Sandra Dallas – The Persian Pickle Club
- Gail Tsukiyama – Women of the Silk
- Saachi Koul – One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
- Kazuo Ishiguro – The Buried Giant
- Emma Donoghue – The Wonder
- Barbara Kingsolver – Small Wonder
- Ruth Ozeki – A Tale for the Time Being
- Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
- Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian
- Mark Sundeen – The Unsettlers
- George R. R. Martin – A Game of Thrones
- Zadie Smith – White Teeth
- Jonathan Franzen – Purity
- George R. R. Martin – A Clash of Kings
- Junichiro Tanizaki – The Makioka Sisters
- Dan Barber – The Third Plate
- Orhan Pamuk – The Red-Haired Woman
- Joy Kogawa – Obasan
- Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar
- Wesley Lowery – They Can’t Kill Us All
- Emily St. John Mandel – Last Night in Montreal
- Kyo Maclear – The Letter Opener
- Amy Tan – The Valley of Amazement
I know I could’ve intentionally picked shorter books to meet my goal, or perhaps read shorter books at the beginning of the year and if it looked good, moved my way into longer ones, but I guess I didn’t mind so much if I didn’t make it.
Looking back on it, I read a lot of good books, books I really enjoyed reading – which was entirely the point. I read some books that challenged me, that taught me a lot, that made me laugh out loud. I just felt a bit more human, and a bit more alive with all of these stories and ideas flowing through. Not all of them were winners, but they all told me a story.
I picked my books off my bookshelf (I’m certainly guilty of having many, many books on my bookshelf I haven’t read yet, but strangely, I keep buying more), but also from the library, and also off the shelves at thrift shops and local bookshops. I do have a list of books to read written down in one of my notebooks, but I tend to read whatever is accessible to me in that moment, and I’ve had some wonderful surprises as a result.
I listened to audio books in the car and read paper books before bed and with the new baby, for the first time, I downloaded an ebook onto my phone, and I read while nursing in the dark. When I had Caleb, I spent a lot of nursing time on my phone, doing basically nothing, and now I’m both pleased with myself for finding a way to sneak in more reading, but also a bit surprised it never occurred to me before.
Caleb is now three, and to my delight, he has turned out to love books. He loves Richard Scarry, and anything to do with trucks or construction vehicles or trains, but he’ll read book after book with you if you let him.
I sometimes think about how technology – smart phones, laptops, iPads – will change the reading habits of children in this era, and not just because I run a shop selling fountain pens and paper. I hope his imagination soars as he experiences the thrill of the car crashing into the watermelon delivery van, or he learns about the morality of stealing from Bananas Gorilla.
I hope Caleb always keeps alive the wonder and magic of a good story, of hilarious characters and surprise accidents, of the rhyme and music of language.
Supposedly brushing his teeth.
making wild rice 