Reading in the Second Plague Year

Every year since 2015 I have tried to read 95 books from January 1st-December 31st. This is not my idea, but follows the example of Ryan Fitzpatrick and Jonathan Ball, who started the #95books challenge in 2009. Some years (2016, 2017) I succeed, but more often I fail (2015, 2018, 2019, 2020).

I read 103 books in 2021. This not only meets the yearly quota but also ranks as my highest single year total ever. This at a time when 2021 was more stressful, exhausting, and anxiety-choked than 2020.

I’m going to give some credit to The Chair.

Most mornings, after eating breakfast, washing my face, and laughing at the epic collection of now-superfluous lipstick cluttering my bathroom counter, I sit in my chair and read. Sometimes there’s music in the background. Often it’s sports commentary: the sound of Anthony McCrossan narrating the movements of the peloton across some stunning European countryside; Mark Hanretty offering cheerful trivia about the next group of skaters at the Grand Prix event of the week. In any case, I spend an hour or so chipping away at my stack of books and drinking coffee. When I finish a book, I add it to the list I have running in a notebook and take a picture of the cover. I post the picture in my Instagram stories and head upstairs to work. Some days, I return to the chair in the evening and read some more, yanking myself off the treadmill of doomscrolling through case numbers and half-digested medical studies to just read a damn book.

A year passed this way.

I read a tweet at some point this year that decried exercises like trying to read 95 books in a year, or talking about your marathon training, or posting pictures of the bread you baked and the sweaters you knit in lockdown, as exhibitionist. In essence, “Some of us are barely surviving this and don’t need you showing off. Stop trying so hard, you’re not fooling anyone.” I felt pity for the person who expressed that sentiment: it’s a shit time, and whatever reserves of strength and resilience you might have had at the end of 2020 surely evaporated in 2021. Mine did. Reading every morning is no panacea for the failures of public health and social welfare, nor can you self-care your way out of a crisis this big. I’m not pretending that an hour of reading a day plus the 15 minutes in the afternoon I beg my brain to just shut up for a bit while I sit on a mediation cushion and try to remember to breathe are The Solve for All of This. Reading this much is about persistence. However shit things were, I could at least retreat to my chair, pick up a book, and do something. 103 notches on the prison wall of the pandemic.

Pics or It Didn’t Happen

Several friends know I attempt 95 books a year, but 2021 was the first time I consistently shared what I was reading as I went along. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people messaged to ask if I’d enjoyed a particular book, to express delight in a shared read, or just to gush over a lovely cover. People I hadn’t spoken with in ages turned up shyly asking for Christmas book recommendations. Old co-workers sent me notes to say they’d taken up their own reading challenges. Recommendations started trickling in. After soloing their way through 2020, people really wanted to chat, commune, and congregate in 2021. “I know we haven’t talked in ages, but that book looks good. What’s it about?”

There are always a handful of people that scoff at the volume, question the reading matter, or just generally get grouchy that I’m gleefully swerving from Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries1, to Raymond Carver collections, to Chaucer, to a book where the main character has sex with a merman2. “Surely X type of book doesn’t count,” I’ve been asked. “Aren’t graphic novels cheating?” (No. Dear god, do you have any idea how long it takes to read a single page of Chris Ware? Sit down in the corner.) “They must be ‘serious’ books to count, right?” If you’re one of those people who has asked one of those questions, or taken the trouble to find this essay and read this far just to find a way to invalidate the book count, perhaps it’s time to examine your definition of a good time.

Recommendations

I do have A List to round out the year, as is tradition when writing these sorts of things. All of these books are, without exception, books that I would purchase and put in your hands and tell you to, “Read it now, go go go!”

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class in Writing, Reading, and Life George Saunders

Life A User’s Manual Georges Perec

Spring Snow Yukio Mishima

Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero Michael DeForge

Coast Mountain Foot ryan fitzpatrick

The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton

The Empress of Salt and Fortune Nghi Vo

On Time and Water Andri Snær Magnason

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest Hanif Abdurraqib

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty Patrick Radden Keefe

Harrow Joy Williams

###And for 2022? I will try, once again, to read 95 books.