I had set a goal in 2021 to read 25 books via Goodreads. And I did it. It felt ducking* amazing. Probably because this was closest to an accomplishment of a New Year Resolution ever in life.
When I started the Challenge, 25 felt like a big bet for me. I know folks who have done 50+ and that’s perfectly okay & possible too!
In fact there were months of no reading activity in 2021 which I would want to blame on the job & city switch if I can get away with it!
Then I stumbled upon and started reading/skimming Atomic Habits and found this habit stacking technique and chain linked reading before sleeping. It also didn’t help that I started having a growing pile of unread books in my home that I started hoarding from Blossoms /Bookworm during my visits to Church Street. Highly recommend Bookworm in Bangalore for the amazing folks & their recommendations!
I was avoiding Kindle for the last couple of months because of my eye strain and post work — I tried not to / avoided digital devices as much as possible. Only if my phone could smirk reading the last bit! 😏
Hence I started indulging much more in paperbacks again with my extensive sticky note usage & pencil markings. Yes, I do have this habit of underlining interest quotes / beautiful pieces of writing. Only in my books of course!
If there’s one person I am most thankful for instilling this reading habit in me when I was way young, it’s you, Jeethu Chetta. I remember the first time you gave The Famous Five in Deadly Danger & an Oxford dictionary along with to search meanings of the “big” words. I believe I was in 3rd or 4th grade then. I last day came across all the books that you bought me while cleaning the shelves dated back to 2004.
Post Deadly Danger I raided his cupboard for similar books in the same series and then to proceeded towards Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and likewise.
I did not have a public library membership and the only library that I ever went was at school. It was huge and we used to have a dedicated library hour every week. We had to visit the library then and would be allowed to select a book of our choice to take it home for a week. However, our librarian would have to approve whether the choice of our book was appropriate for us or not. I remember when we were only allowed to have books like Noddy / other colourful comics and I remember taking Famous Five & getting scolded for trying to be “oversmart”. In fact, we also had to write a book summary after each borrowed book so that she is convinced we ACTUALLY read the book. In a way, it did help in learning to write summaries long time back.
Overtime, she relaxed her strictness with me and I was allowed to take books as I pleased and not just restricted to the library period. I remember that I used to spend a lot of time in there even during the lunch breaks catching up on magazines like Reader’s Digest or The Week since it was expensive to buy them at home.
I did stick to the likes of Enid Blyton for a long time until I saw one of my friends, to be precise, M.Sharique, reading this big book called Harry Potter in Grade 6. I was in awe that he was reading such big books at our age and was super curious to know more about it. I had several seniors who were kind enough to lend me books to read and I started with the Harry Potter series in Grade 7. In fact, I remember that I requested the Order of Phoenix as a birthday gift because the person I borrowed the other books from did not have this with her. I used to get absolutely lost in the book and ended up staying very late reading it to the point that my mother had to come and turn off the lights. And weirdly and immediately, I used to get hiccups everytime she did that! Until I of course started reading again. Such a weird event I tell you!
Overtime, my genre of interest shifted to the Young adult/ Romance genre(Twilight was doing it’s rounds now. So was Chetan Bhagat 🥲) plus old time classics and also like the Anne of Green Gables, Mallory Towers, St Claire’s & Chicken Soup series in mid teens. I remember me, Rohini & Shoma discussing the plots of each and fawning over the typical Prince Charming male characters in these.
In college, there was a drastic dip in books read mostly because the library contained only engineering books and philosophy. But it was during this time that I reconnected with an old school friend and joined the Eloor library in Ernakulam. We used to visit the library together every 2 weeks or so, give book recommendations to each other and take long walks through Convent Junction and needless to say the romance did bloom amidst the bookshelves. We frequented the place so much as to have the folks over there ask why the other was absent if either of us went alone. Such beautiful days I tell you 💕
Once I left Kochi to Indore, I rarely read for almost 2 years. And mostly from my friends Nishant who used to buy a lot of books. I never bought much and the Sapiens I got then is still unread. 🥲🥲
After returning back home to Kochi, I started visiting the library again. Although, this time, I mostly went alone 🙂
Amidst the pandemic, to keep me distracted, I ordered a Kindle finally. I was very much against the idea of owning one initially and was all about having the feel of the book and the smell of the pages while reading. But it turned out to be such a beautiful piece of useful invention with it’s easiness and flexibility. Thank you Bezos!
It helped in picking up the pace of reading and slowly before I know it, the momentum was back. I also started listening to audio books during my commute to office daily but I realised that my attention span was way too poor to listen to them for long durations. I have now switched listening to podcasts nowadays while walking.
I also convinced a dear friend to include me in his bookclub where books were read & discussed on a bi-weekly basis on Google Meet because of which I started reading again consistently. And then the move to Bangalore happened in March’21 and the pace slowed down yet again.
But back in August, I started reading every night before sleep switching between fiction/non-fiction, kindle and paperbacks.The intention was to replace the mindless scrolling and to induce sleep organically. I discovered an interest in Greek Mythology, Psychology, Business & Biographies and I also picked up the habit of skipping when a book did not capture my interest and not having the urge to finish something just because I started it. It took a lot of effort to overcome the conditioning to not finish books.
I also added a couple of interesting folks in Goodreads to get book recommendations instead of just self discovery & random browsing and got some amazing reads as well.
While it most certainly should not be about the count of the books read in the Reading Challenge, and rather how much you were able to absorb the content, the gamification did help me get back my habit.
So yeah, thank you Goodreads for that. I did restart the same 25 books challenge this year too!
Looking forward to having some amazing reads! Drop your suggestions in comments :)
Favourites from this year
- Educated — Tara Westover
- The Last Lecture — Randy Pausch
- Circe — Madelline Miller
- No Rules Rules — Reed Hastings
My Good Reads — https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/99643243-kj
*ducking — cuz you know why.
