A long book gathers the pieces.

Notes on reading at the end of the year

The final weeks of the year always carry a particular charge. Part holiday atmosphere, part logistical unraveling, part cultural insistence that we take stock of our lives whether we feel ready or not. In that atmosphere, even my reading life — which is usually the place where I feel most interior, most grounded — begins to take on an evaluative tone. I catch myself tallying and comparing, wondering whether I read “enough,” whether the year adds up to something coherent, whether the gaps reveal something about my discipline or my character. Then the Best-Of lists appear, multiplying overnight, and suddenly the most personal part of my life feels like a performance review. Ugh. Barf.

😵‍💫 This weird end-of-year thing

Earlier this week, aware of how deeply this was tugging at me, I reached out to my friend Sara Hildreth and asked if she would meet me on Substack Live. I wanted to talk publicly, but also honestly, about this end-of-year unease and the feeling of falling out of rhythm with oneself. Sara thinks and writes so clearly about books and reading so I trusted she would help me turn the chaos into something legible.

As we talked, I realized how much of my anxiety was not about reading itself but about the accumulated static around it this time of the year — the fractured schedule, the sense of running out of time, the vague pressure to “finish strong,” whatever that means for a reader who works intentionally to not keep score. I was rambling my way through this when Sara offered something that felt like clearing a path through clutter: choose one long book and allow yourself to be held by it. She reminded me that so much of the unease in reading comes from the in-between moments — the pauses, the indecision, the wheel-spinning about what should come next.

A long book removes that. Once you’ve entered its world, the choosing is over. You just keep reading. If you watch our conversation, you can see how my shoulders dropped when we started talking about this. I felt physical relief in simply considering this approach to dealing with the stress of it all. It makes so much sense — a narrowing of focus, a single world to return to, a narrative with enough weight to keep you anchored when everything else feels scattered.

📕 How one long book helps

As I have been thinking about this idea some more since we talked, I realized I had actually done this once without naming it. This past summer, while traveling through Europe, my reading should have collapsed entirely — travel usually knocks the legs out from under my routines — but I had started My Brilliant Friend before the trip, and Ferrante simply carried me. Past airports and delays and unfamiliar rooms. I didn’t have to decide what to read next because I was already in motion, already inside the work.

The continuity came from the book, not from my circumstances. Not only did I read while we travelled. I was also able to transition smoothly back into my normal life routine through it too. Sidebar: Fuck Nino.

This week, in conversation with Sara, it became immediately clear which book could play that role now. I’ve been slowly making my way through Anna Karenina, part of my 19th Century Wives Under Pressure project, and I’ve reached the end of Book Three. I am way past the discovery portion of this project, I am IN now and it is divine. The idea of letting Anna be the single thread through the rest of my year feels not just reasonable but oddly luxurious. One book instead of ten. The possibility of depth. GIMME.

I know myself well enough to recognize the relief of having a structure that is both modest and expansive. Five hundred pages is a commitment, but an inviting one. If I finish — if the rhythm of December unexpectedly opens up and I find myself turning the last page — it won’t be because I optimized anything. It will be because I allowed a book to hold my attention long enough to become a presence in my life. And if, improbably, there is still time left, I’ll choose another long work and enter it slowly, the way I prefer: a few uninterrupted hours with the opening chapters, enough time to let the book declare its terms. I’m circling The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt — a book that I have been dying to read ever since I read in Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia that (THE!!!) Merve Emre recommended it as an antidote to the deepest of reading slumps.

What I began to understand, in talking with Sara, was that the real issue wasn’t a lack of discipline or momentum — it was attention, which December seems engineered to splinter. A long book gathers the pieces. It gives the mind something continuous to return to when everything else demands to be handled in fragments. It reminds me that the lasting part of reading is the immersion itself, the experience of being held inside a world long enough to feel changed by it.

So that is my plan for the end of the year, as simple as it gets: one big book, approached without haste. A single through-line in a month that wants to pull me in five directions at once. Not an escape from the season, but a quieter rhythm running through it.

🤓 Questions for you:

• How does the end of the year shape your reading, if at all?

• Do you find yourself taking stock, or do you resist the impulse?

• And if you were to choose one long book to carry you through December, which one would it be?

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