- I’ll never stop finding books I want to read.
- Reading in this volume made me evaluate writing styles, plot directions, and stock characters in a new way.
- There are always new areas, regions, genres, sub-genres, publication forms, and other exciting things to be found. If you think “you’ve read everything”, you’ve not opened your mind to all the possibilities around you.
- Having a small community of avid readers in my space has made the world of difference. Especially as my reading family come at books in entirely different ways.
- I love talking and writing about books and I want to do that more.
- I enjoy giving books as much if not more than I enjoy buying books for me.
- Emotionally, I delineate between (1) “books I read for me”, (2) “books I read because I’m worrying about what other people think”, and (3) “books for work”. Sometimes, the intellectual pressure pile yields a gem, but I’d like to focus more on my joys in 2021.
- My learning disabilities are present rather than separate in my reading habits. I now understand better what does/does not hold my attention, when in the day I read most comfortably, what kind of writing asks me to find pictures in words rather than offers images easily, which fonts to avoid, that I get anxious reading books with very tight spines, etc.
- My triggers and gore thresholds have changed.
- I hate conventional book clubs but “buddy reading” – where I read at the same book around the same time as one or two other people – is great.
- There is, actually, a balance to “books bought” vs. “books read”. I do not enjoy being surrounded by too many books I haven’t read but I do need a range of choices.
- Shock realisation: I don’t want a big library of books unless I love them all. I am really unromantic about a book once it has been read. I’d like to think more about where the books I get rid of go to. I’d also like a designated “unread” bookcase (a small one), so I don’t keep finding things I haven’t read and stressing out.
- I am very fussy about the “Young Adult” literature I read and need to keep space between the different YA options I read to have the greatest enjoyment of them.
- I still love self-help books and I’m going to try to confront my internalised snobbery about the fact that I like reading about cleaning, wellness, and spirituality.
- I still need and love audiobooks. I wish my local library had a richer range of content.
- Long books can be a relief as well as a chore. I will definitely keep an eye out for a 500+ page novel in 2021.
- If a “classic” or venerated book doesn’t speak to me, I need to move on and not feel emotionally or intellectually negligent.
- I need to keep up my non-fiction reading because I value it but…
- I should maintain a 1:4 ratio of non-fiction to any other form because I read a lot of fragments of non-fiction when at work.
- READING FOR WORK COUNTS AS STILL “COUNTS” AS READING.
I read 125 books in 2020 and this is what I learned…
Hannah Marie Robbins 