Reading for Joy, Not My Job

So last year, one of my goals was to read six books in a year. I got through only one: Cane River by Lalita Tademy, which I highly recommend. So what happened? I boil it down to work. When reading attentively became my full-time job, reading for pleasure became physically draining. I’ve been known to read a book until Chapter 5, put it down, and not finish it until a year later. I’ve tried audiobooks, but it always felt like I was cheating, so I lost interest.

As a kid, I was an avid reader. In the third grade, I used to steal books from my classroom. The new girl from Colombia (my new best friend) or I would play lookout while the other slid a shiny, new copy of Ramona, St. George and the Dragon, or Sideways Stories from Wayside School into a backpack. We used to call it “choh-ping,” or shopping in Spanish-accented English. When I got home, I relished those books, reading them over and over again, and tracing the illustrations on a sheet of loose leaf paper.

When not being a delinquent for the sake of literature, I spent hours in the library, combing through aisles and aisles of books. I used to tear through books in one day – The Babysitter’s Club, Sweet Valley High, R.L. Stine, and Christopher Pike. I then graduated to the likes of Maeve Binchy, Stephen King, J.D. Salinger, and John Steinbeck, which took longer to read but had juicier tales.

Toward the end of high school and in college, I slid. I was reading and analyzing great books, but because they were required, not because I sought them out. When I became an editor, news stories replaced novels, which never quite gained a foothold again. (The irony is, the more you read, the better you write and edit.)

So to remedy my dilemma, I came up with a list of books I want to complete in the year.

• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order by Richard N. Haas
• Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson
• The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri
• The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan

And if I’m feeling really ambitious: Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr.

Now that I have my list down, I feel much better about my goal, unlike last year when it was some vague resolution in which I had only a marginal interest in completing. A few of these books I can begin to read now because they’re already on my bookshelf, remnants of college classes and impulse shopping. We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, happy reading!