I’m reading!

Well, I’ve always been reading. I read a lot. I humblebrag about my 120 book reading challenge for the year. But lately, I’ve been suffering a crisis of documentation. My goal in 2022, along with the quantitive goal of reading 120 books, had been to annotate more of my reading, which I guess was my way of saying journaling my reading. I failed on both accounts. I’d been using Goodreads. Yes, part of the evil empire, but a solid platform to track and tag my progress, and sort through books when my left-brain compels me to quantify how many audiobooks (47) or non-fiction titles (24) I’ve consumed in 2022, or how long it took me to get through Roots (almost 10 weeks, which is what I ultimately blame my 2022 reading shortfall on).

The journaling never really got off the ground, though. Probably because Goodreads is more a place to post reviews and less where I ought to house thoughts about and connections I draw with what I’m reading. I’m not concerned about the personal-ness, of the entries, as much as I don’t think that the similarities I find in a memoirist’s background to my own parents’ immigration stories are what people should use to base their own decision to read or not to read House of Sticks on. Also because sometimes how I feel about a book is just plain petty, and not worth bringing down a star average for. Also also because sometimes what I have to say about a book just isn’t that coherent.

So. I’m making things really hard for myself and leaning into the journal-ness of my goal. If the intent is to be more mindful about my reading, and to internalize and ruminate more on how I feel about a book, then I guess I’m going all fucking in. I’ll still be on Goodreads logging and tagging, because I really like to log and tag. But I’m also going to be keeping an honest-to-goodness journal, with watercolor and everything, of some (maybe most?) of what I consume. Because I love a format where can’t check and correct my spelling (distopian [sic], ugh).

Oh yeah, and I’m attempting to bring back the blog.