Reading 52 Books in 52 Weeks, Year 8
Reading continued to be a salve in Pandemic Season 2. The world thankfully opened up a little more, but books remained my primary reliable escape.
What I did differently this year
I didn’t attend as many author or book events this year. But I kept up a semi-regular romance book club with my friend in Chicago. (Hot take: the best kind of book club is just two people.) We drank wine over Zoom as we discussed romantic rabbis (The Intimacy Experiment) and surly crab fishermen (It Happened One Summer). It was a delight to see her in person in New York in the summer.
At the beginning of the year, a publicist reached out asking if I was interested in receiving an Advance Readers Copy (ARC) for Kink, a short story collection edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell. I have no idea how my name got onto publicists’ radars but I leapt at the opportunities. I was excited to read ARCs from authors I admired, like Michelle Zauner and Kat Chow, as well as discover new ones on Netgalley like Denise Williams.
I also wrote mini reviews for the Cosmos Book Club, who generously shared ARCs with me for Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Y.Z. Chin’s Edge Case. I’ve been a longtime attendee and supporter, and it was fun to get involved in a different way. My favorite (and only) in-person book gathering this year was their outdoor book swap one sunny summer Saturday. Meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends over books was an ideal weekend.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner was undoubtedly one of the most personally impactful books I’ve ever read. It inspired me to write an essay for Electric Literature about her memoir, my mom, and how bonding over food helped me cope with anticipatory grief. Her writing and music has meant so much to me, and to see Japanese Breakfast live at Brooklyn Steel this year made my heart so full.
From mid-February to the end of April, I was confined to my apartment due to the triple whammy of a health condition, COVID-19, and racism. I also had surgery in April, so I got a lot of reading done in those months. Then in mid-July, I moved to Brooklyn and moved in with my partner! Naturally, July was the month I read the least, and it threw me a bit off track for most of the year. Also, it didn’t help that it took me a whole ass month to read Dune.
But the upside of having done this now for eight years is that I know myself and my reading habits really well. So, I took the last two weeks of the year off and just tore through countless romance novels, a really fun essay collection called Tacky, and my favorite reread, The Time Traveler’s Wife.
I still use my book-tracking spreadsheet to track metadata around the books and authors I read. The final count ended up being 52 books, with 41 books by women, 18 of those written by women of color, and 10 books by men, 7 of those written by men of color (plus one short story collection jointly edited by a man and a woman of color).
With libraries open, I didn’t buy as many books as I did last year. Of the 52 books I read, 21 were library checkouts from NYPL and now the Brooklyn Public Library. Still, I read many of the books I preordered in 2020 like One Last Stop and Somebody’s Daughter. I read 39 physical books, 11 ebooks, and 1 PDF (lolsob, truly the worst way to read a book).
This year, I wrote a lot more than I realized. I published an essay in Electric Literature and a short story in Taco Bell Quarterly. I took many fantastic Zoom writing classes through The Resort and The Fairest Writer. I participated in both rounds of Jami Attenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer and wrote 23,000 words. I revised and added 48,000 words to my novel draft. I kept up with my biweekly newsletter, migrated it to self-hosting, and sent 25 dispatches. I consciously tried to build a more regular writing practice this year and although there were fits and starts, I’m proud of the progress I made on longer projects.
Pages read per month:
Breakdown of books I read:
As I’d expected, I skewed more towards fiction than nonfiction: 37 vs. 13, plus 2 books of poetry.
In nonfiction, I read many memoirs (Fairest, Seeing Ghosts, Somebody’s Daughter) and essay collections (Goodbye, Again, Tacky). I read the books of writers who I’ve followed for years on the internet (Can’t Even by Anne Helen Petersen and What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon). To help me reconnect with my writing, I read books like Make Your Art No Matter What and Save the Cat! Writes a Novel for both existential and practical advice. I found great solace, insight, and beauty in the poetry of Yanyi and Ross Gay.
In fiction, I read several incredible debuts like Luster, A Burning, and Afterparties. I read novels by authors whose newsletters about writing have been immensely valuable, such as Jami Attenberg and Leigh Stein. I read books that were turned into movies/TV (Shadow and Bone, Misery, Dune) because I like to see which adaptation choices were made. I devoured 19 romance novels, many of which were thanks to the romance book club with my friend. She introduced me to Tessa Bailey and more Sarah MacLean. We read new releases by Emily Henry, Helen Hoang, and Rosie Danan, and independently read all of the Brown sisters’ books by Talia Hibbert.
How I track what I read
I tweet out a book when I finish it with the hashtag #52booksin52weeks. I use Coach.me and Goodreads to track day-to-day progress. I’ve started to compile all of my tweets/books into Twitter moments for better discoverability: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. I’ve liked sharing my recent reads in my newsletter and the books can be found on my Bookshop page.
How I choose books to read
I continuously add books to my to-read list on my book tracking spreadsheet and/or on Goodreads. If there are authors I like or writers I follow online, I try to read their books—previously published, debuts, or new releases. As always, I prioritize friends’ reading recommendations.
A few favorites
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
- Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean
- Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi
- Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
- Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
- Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert
- Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford
- Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
- Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
- The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
- The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang
What I’m doing differently this year
I want to finish a novel draft this year and continue to commit myself to a more sustainable writing practice. Reading will naturally flow from that, since reading always helps when I’m feeling stuck and inspires me to tell my own stories.
