back to reading

january 7th, 2024

Goodreads recently released its annual Your Year in Books review, and I read 23 books in 2023! Ever since I started tracking my reading a few years ago, I’ve steadily increased the number of books I read each year:

2020: 7 books

2021: 14 books

2022: 18 books

2023: 23 books

I’m pretty happy with this trend. I was an avid reader growing up, but that habit took a sharp downturn during college. Between classes and social life, college kept me busy, and reading for pleasure slipped down my list of priorities. I would occasionally finish a book or two over summer or winter breaks, but otherwise I was an infrequent reader. I know that “number of books read” is a flawed metric, but it’s good enough to see my progress.

These days I’m reading everywhere: on the subway, at cafes, while waiting for appointments. I rebuilt this habit almost entirely because of my Kindle. I bought mine in 2020 on the recommendation of a friend, and I’ve grown to love it. I get why many people prefer physical books over e-readers, but the ease of instantly downloading any book I want has made the trade-off worth it. If I really love a book, I’ll still purchase a copy from my local bookstore to keep my physical collection growing.

These days, I read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, skewing to science fiction on one side and history on the other — everything from 20th-century politics to the origins of computing to early human history. Every now and then, I’ll detour to books about urbanism or science.

Going forward, I don’t want to track my reading too closely, but I’m grateful that I found my way back to it.