I just buy whatever is there at the bookstore… If we’re talking about how much I’m willing to spend max, I’ve spent >$200 for art books and I spent $150 on an art instruction book that used to be a reasonable price but since the artist/author died, the family is price gouging to get more money. I really loved the book (an instructor lent her copy to me) and so I just sighed and bought my own copy.

That would be a grammatical/spelling error, though, not a factual error.

Mrs Dalloway is one of my husband’s favorites. Maybe not his favorite-favorite, but it’s up there. I’d be intrigued by any guy who was into Virgina Woolf! Although he read it at my recommendation after we were married, so it wouldn’t have been on his dating profile. Actually he wasn’t much of a reader when we met. I gave him One Hundred Years of Solitude when we were dating and he gamely accepted it, but then didn’t read it at all lol. I guess when we were dating, his favorite books were Stephen Ambrose history books, which is cool Like, that’s not my style, but sure, yeah I’ll swipe right on someone who likes that stuff.

I do the goodreads challenge because it’s just a goal for x number of books read in the year. Like others are saying, you can create a challenge within the book count that you would be interested in.

Here’s what I try to do every year:

-I try to have a page number goal in addition to book number goal. That way I don’t read like 10 novellas, and make sure I get some longer, denser books in there too. If I really want to focus on page count, I might lower the number of books I plan to read to compensate.

-I try to read a certain number of books in translation, and a certain number of languages. I just got a book translated from Indonesian, and that will be my first book translated from that language, which is cool!

-In March, I try to read only books by women. In February I try to read only Black authors. Sometimes the urge to read books by white men hits me during these months lol, and if that happens I just go with it, but make a note to come back to books by people who aren’t white men at some point elsewhere in the year. I also read books by Asian-American writers, Native/Indigenous writers throughout the year. (To be clear, I read PLENTY by white men lol, I’m not like, completely avoiding books by them or anything, it’s just that their works are already ubiquitous and if you’re not paying attention, or going mostly from 1000 Books to Read Before You Die lists, that’s gonna be most of what you read).

-I try to read both fiction and non-fiction throughout the year. Some years are more fiction heavy, some are more non-fiction heavy, but whatever mood I happen to be in, I do try to make sure it’s a little balanced. I also incorporate poetry.

Not so much a challenge, but more like a food pyramid for books. What do I consider part of a healthy intellectual literary diet? What will feed my mind, and my spirit the most this year? I try to stay flexible otherwise I will just stop reading entirely (I’m prone to a “if you can’t do it perfect, don’t do it at all” mindset) but yeah, you can totally take your own self knowledge and goals and make your own challenge!

Middlemarch!! Not because it’s long or victorian era fiction (I’ve read long books and vic lit AND other long 19th century novels), but I guess because I had just assumed I’d never read it. But one day I got the urge and was like, why not! I read it over a few months and really loved it! I’m really proud of myself for not just writing it off or pigeonholing myself as someone who “is done with the classics and mainly only reads contemporary literature now”. I’ve read a LOT of classics in my life, but still, I haven’t read all of them! Really glad I got to this one.

I surprised myself by LOVING “Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukhergee. I’m not really interested in cancer, at all, but this book was amazing and so well written; it’s long and I was interested the whole time.

Actually I guess I read a lot of books on the medical industry and the practice of medicine, which might be a kind of more unusual subject to read about for leisure. Atul Gawande’s books are really great, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I loved his book Complications, and his more recent book Being Mortal (that REALLY affected me), but, weirdly, the book of his that I have thought about a lot over the years is The Checklist Manifesto. It might be a bit dated now, only because I think they have now implemented a lot of what he was suggesting in that book. It’s super interesting.

Ah I missed your comment and mentioned Mary Roach as well. I also loved Stiff.

Idk that I had a strong enough world view when I was younger; I think it’s more that books helped to shape it, rather than being able to point to a book that changed it.

One of the first pieces of literature I remember being truly excited by was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because we acted it out in my 7th grade English class. I skimmed the character list and when the teacher was asking who wanted to read what part, my had SHOT up for Helena, the woman with the unrequited love for Demetrius (who had unrequited love for Hermia). I thought it was fascinating that she was just so shamelessly in love with this guy who was in love with another woman, that she would sabotage their plans because of it. I wanted to embody her character for a bit.

I found all the relationship dynamics of that play to be fascinating - and something we the audience could explore in the safe space of the Elizabethan era comedy, where you know it will all have a happy ending. I loved that; it really made me excited about literature and the relationships between characters.

I read Fahrenheit 451 on a school trip - I read it really quickly and only once so I don’t remember much, but the part where the protagonist reads Dover Beach to the women… Usually I skim poems in books, but after he reads the poem, one of the women burst into tears. That surprised me, so I went back and actually read the poem. I loved it so much that I read it over and over. Basically I paused my reading of the book to just read this poem so many times in a row that I memorized it (and I still have it memorized to this day) and then I continued on and finished the book. That passage is all I remember, but I will always love that moment of that book. It showed me the powerful reactions that people can have to art, and it helped me take a closer look at a poem that been one of my favorites for years now.

Joan Didion’s Run River is, for me, kind of a mood. I don’t reread books very often, but I’ve read that one about five times.

Those books already exist haha; people (generally speaking) will always want a book like that; I’m so glad the slower, more thoughtful books exist for people like me who get overwhelmed by too much Action and Plot. No reason to put another one out in the world, there is probably one being written, unironically, at this very moment.

This might be weird, but for me Anna Karenina was a total page turner. I picked it up in the bookstore having never heard of it (I was in high school) read the first page, and was completely drawn in. I read it compulsively until I’d finished. Recently I reread it to see if it was as good as I remembered (I mean I know it’s good, but why did I enjoy it sooo much?) and it IS! The plot moves along, there’s a lot of interesting characters and things that happen along the way. Again I found myself hooked from the beginning and unable to put it down.

I read them first in 2015 and then reread them last year. I think about them all the time.

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrente were amazing.

Not to seem smart, but to try and fit in with my friends: I attempted a lot of Vonnegut that I didn’t get or enjoy because my friends liked him a lot. And he’s great, just not my style. I tried to read a lot of Heinlein because my best friend was super into old sci fi - I was only able to finish Stranger in a Strange Land, but only because I powered through the last quarter of the book. I couldn’t finish the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and others I don’t remember the titles of. We were also into David Bowie at the time, and he was in a movie adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis (who also authored The Queen’s Gambit). So I bought a copy of that (it might have been out of print at the time; I found it on ebay or something), and it wasn’t my style, and I didn’t really enjoy it, but I read it.

Actually my style IS all of the books people complain that people read just to look smart - I legitimately enjoy those and actually get accused of being pretentious or, worse, of being insecure about my intelligence. It’s not true, I just like realism, even (especially?) when it occasionally borders on the mundane.

Not to seem smart, but to try and fit in with my friends: I attempted a lot of Vonnegut that I didn’t get or enjoy because my friends liked him a lot. And he’s great, just not my style. I tried to read a lot of Heinlein because my best friend was super into old sci fi - I was only able to finish Stranger in a Strange Land, but only because I powered through the last quarter of the book. I couldn’t finish the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and others I don’t remember the titles of. We were also into David Bowie at the time, and he was in a movie adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis (who also authored The Queen’s Gambit). So I bought a copy of that (it might have been out of print at the time; I found it on ebay or something), and it wasn’t my style, and I didn’t really enjoy it, but I read it.

Actually my style IS all of the books people complain that people read just to look smart - I legitimately enjoy those and actually get accused of being pretentious or, worse, of being insecure about my intelligence. It’s not true, I just like realism, even (especially?) when it occasionally borders on the mundane.

Stephen King. He is obviously good at what he does, but I am just not into it.

Unpopular here, but JRR Tolkein - huge respect for him as a scholar and how he wrote a lot of that into to Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, but I am just not into it.

A Visit from the Goon Squad. Luckily I first read it about ten years ago and have probably forgotten enough details to make a reread worth it.

I know I’m in a bad place, reading-wise, if I’m buying books much faster than I can read them. When I’m in a good place, I’m calm and buying books as I finish them. When I’m in a bad place, I’m mentally all over the place and am trying to buy books almost as a substitute for reading them. They’re aspirational purchases.

I do the same thing for art supplies or any gear I need for my hobbies. Whenever I notice I’ve bought more things than I can reasonably use or more than I need right now, I’m compensating for something that’s lacking psychologically/emotionally.

For me, they’re only two separate hobbies when I myself am somehow split.

I know I’m in a bad place, reading-wise, if I’m buying books much faster than I can read them. When I’m in a good place, I’m calm and buying books as I finish them. When I’m in a bad place, I’m mentally all over the place and am trying to buy books almost as a substitute for reading them. They’re aspirational purchases.

I do the same thing for art supplies or any gear I need for my hobbies. Whenever I notice I’ve bought more things than I can reasonably use or more than I need right now, I’m compensating for something that’s lacking psychologically/emotionally.

For me, they’re only two separate hobbies when I myself am somehow split.