My year in reading

Notes on how I read, what stayed with me, and what I’m carrying forward

As I mentioned in my planning post last week, I am in a constant battle with myself. I absolutely cannot stick to a plan. Anything that feels prescriptive triggers something rebellious (childish??) in me and, somehow, makes me feel paralyzed. I stop moving altogether.

At the same time, I care deeply about my reading life. I want it to feel active and intentional, not aspirational, guilt-driven or haphazard. So instead of trying to decide what I would read in 2025, I focused on how I wanted reading to function in my life — the conditions that make it possible for me to read steadily, joyfully, and without resentment.

What surprised me is how well that worked. Reading didn’t feel like something I had to protect or squeeze in. I resolved to read and everything else rearranged itself around that decision. It was glorious.

Below are a few notes from the year — how I read, what I read, and what I want to carry forward.

Below are the “goals” I set for myself at the beginning of the year. They’re less goals in the traditional sense and more orientations — ways of pointing myself in directions that felt exciting rather than constraining.

Looking at this list now, with a bit of editorial distance, I can see something very clearly: I was mostly trying to give myself permission to have a personal taste and to enjoy it. In how many different ways have I said some version of find what you like and read more of it?

Still — it worked.

🟢→ SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS MADE
🟡→ SOME PROGRESS MADE
🔴→ NO PROGRESS MADE

Regardless of how awkwardly I may have articulated these at the time, the approach worked. I didn’t have a single bad reading month. 🤯🤩🥳 Looking back, the volume I read feels less like an achievement and more like a side effect of being in a state of reading flow — a phrase I almost hesitate to name, for fear of jinxing it.

🦦 What actually helped me stay in flow:

• Monographic reading — returning to the same writers repeatedly and reading authors in conversation with each other. This genuinely made me feel like I “leveled up” as a reader. In 2025, I became a completionist in Ayşegül Savaş, Claire-Louise Bennett and Constance Debré, while reading multiple books by Deborah Levy (thank you Kate Jones), Elena Ferrante (thank you Laurel Clayton), and Jenny Erpenbeck (with help from my favorite Erpenbeck sherpa, Regan).

  

• Reading projects instead of reading plans — I defined smaller, self-contained arcs by author or theme and that gave me structure without rigidity. For my 19th Century Wives Under Pressure project, I read Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, for example. I will continue working on this project in 2026 and have a few others to share soon.

• Being selective about new releases. I read far fewer buzzy books and felt zero regret about it. I always keep a close eye on what’s coming out but my sense of reading peace definitely increase once I stopped letting the PR machine dictate my reading choices

✈️ Where and how reading fit into my life:

• I read essentially every day in little spurts. I read a few pages in the morning before I shower and get ready for work. I started commuting to my office 4 days a week and that gave me more time back and forth to listen to audio books. I always brought a physical copy of my current book in my bag and most days I read a few pages at lunch. I listened to audiobooks while doing dishes at night and did Family Book Club with my husband and 8 year old basically 365 nights of the year. I read before bed most nights, too. I read in longer sits on weekends.

  

• I got BIG chunks of reading while flying to and from Puerto Rico in January, and then again to and from Europe during our summer vacation (even though I can’t read much at the beach). One of my favorite reading experiences was reading Long Distance by Ayşegül Savaş while on a train to Berlin and that felt so fitting. I went crazy and finished Anna Karenina over Thanksgiving weekend… a day of leftovers and reading in a pile on the sofa with my kid and my husband. It was one of the best days of my year.

• Biggest frustration: I didn’t make the library my primary source of books, even though I wanted to. I know that reading from the library has so many benefits — including curbing your consumerist impulses — so I really hope to do better on this front in 2026.

  

I’m writing this on December 22, with some reading still ahead of me, but here’s where things stand. This year, I read 81 books. I have never read this many books in a single year in my whole entire life (I am 44). BUT — more importantly — reading has never felt easier. I was never not reading, there were no slumps.

⭐️ Favorites and standouts:

• Favorite novels (in the order I read them):

  • Pond — Claire-Louise Bennett

  • The Wall — Marlen Haushofer

  • Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy

It feels unhinged that all three lived in the same calendar year. These are now forever-books for me.

• Favorite nonfiction:
  On Giving Up — Adam Phillips
  This book helped me process long-shelved grad school grief in ways I didn’t realize I still needed. It also brought many of you to this newsletter.

• Favorite poetry collection:
  Ecstasy — Alex Dimitrov
  Sexy, tender, queer, big city life, so many gin and tonics. I adore his work.

• Favorite new release:
  Big Kiss, Bye-Bye — Claire-Louise Bennett
  I know. I will shut up about her soon. Probably.

• Favorite series:
  Constance Debré’s Trilogie, completed this year with Name. Playboy is still my favorite, but the three books together make perfect sense as a unit. Her next book is one of my most anticipated reads of 2026.

• Favorite longform essay: When does a divorce begin? by Anahid Nersessian for The Yale Review.

• Favorite publisher(s): Semiotext(e), 7 Stories Press, Transit Books. My year would have felt very different without them.

⭐️ Books and authors that stayed with me:

• Favorite new-to-me authors:
  Claire-Louise Bennett, Ayşegül Savaş, Jenny Erpenbeck.

• Favorite book characters:
  The unnamed narrators of Claire-Louise Bennet; Lenù (The Neapolitan Quartet) and Levin (Anna Karenina). Apparently I love self-questioning nerds.

• Books that will forever stay with me:
  Open Throat by Henry Hoke; Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (you never forget your first one); all of Bennett; all of Savaş; The Wall by Marlen Haushofer; Visitation and Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck; A Girl’s Story; and, towering over everything, Anna Karenina. The drama! The yearning! The bad decisions! The torment!!!

  

• Book that made me feel part of a community:
  Reading — and raging over — The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante years after everyone else. The grief people still feel after finishing those books made me feel deeply understood.

• Strangest thing I read:
  Open Throat by Henry Hoke, Ghost Fish by Stuart Pennebaker, The Cows by Lydia Davis, Little Lazarus by Michael Bible (YSR). They all share one thing in common. I’ll let you spot it. 🐾

• Book everybody loved but I didn’t:
  On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle. I got it. I didn’t feel it. The existence of four more volumes fills me with dread. Still — books that don’t work for us matter just as much because they clarify our taste.

  

As I am writing this and thinking about reading goals to set for 2026, I am realizing how often in the past I have tried to make goals around CHANGE. But given the fantastic year that I had, I feel that this time around, I am focused on keeping a few things intact.

• A reading-centered life.

• Organized, intentional reading.

• Fewer goals, more continuity of self — it feels like such relief to be here.

On a more meta-note: I started writing about books because I needed focus and accountability. I wanted a reason to prioritize reading and people to talk to about what I was finding. What I didn’t expect was how sustaining this community would become.

I try to respond to every comment you guys leave on my posts because the conversations matter to me. My reading life is genuinely richer because of what you guys bring into it — your experiences, your disagreements, your recommendations, your questions, your enthusiasm.

I can’t quit my job and read all day (tragic), but I do take my work on this newsletter very seriously. I owe you as much, given how much you give ME. Thank you for being here and for caring about books in the particular, thoughtful ways that you do.

Some questions for you:

• What kind of reader did you feel yourself becoming this year?

• Was there a book you didn’t just enjoy, but carried?

• Do you tend to plan your reading, or does it organize itself around your life?

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