Last year, I started a twenty-book challenge after reading articles about overachievers who read one hundred books a year. I decided to aim a little lower, and I challenged myself to read twenty books in 2016. I read twenty-one.
Feeling confident about my twenty-book reading ability, I kept the goal the same and tried to read twenty books again this year.
Epic. Fail. I read eighteen this year.
"You did read Jonathan Franzen's Freedom this year," Dan reminded me. "That's a pretty big tome."
True. However, I read The Mists of Avalon in 2016, which is over eight hundred pages long.
I don't know what happened.
I still read some good books this year, even though I didn't quite reach my goal.
Becky's 2017 Twenty-Book Challenge
JANUARY
1. I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
Notes and Favorites: “Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five, you will be nostalgic for at the age of sixty-five.” The chapter, “Considering the Alternative,” was a poignant take on aging and death. She died six years after the publication of this book.
2. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Notes and Favorites: What kind of responsibility comes with freedom and how do we handle it? The story is about marriage and family in a post 9/11 world, but the relationships also serve as a microcosm of American society (and American, dare I say, freedom).
3. I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
Notes and Favorites: A wry but at the same time poignant final collection of essays before her death in 2012. Throughout the book, she lets you know, “More on that later” She actually remembers a lot, rather than nothing, as the title suggests. Of course, Ephron has also said, “Take notes on everything,” great advice, especially since I remember nothing too.
FEBRUARY
4. An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski
Notes and Favorites: This was a gift. I would not have read this book otherwise. I don’t read a lot of memoirs unless they are funny or really well-written or about rock stars, and this book isn't any of that. It’s not bad, but it’s not my thing. It’s also pretty white savior-ish, rich white woman helps poor African American boy. The story is nice though. It was okay.
5. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Notes and Favorites: I feel like we all need to listen to people like Trevor Noah who came of age in a country ruled by systematic racial oppression, considering the turn (or one hundred steps backwards) our own country has taken.
MARCH
6. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Notes and Favorites: I remember my brother saying Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch haunted him. I feel that way about this novel. I had to take a moment to weep after finishing this story. “Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was a memory falls out of the world. We rise again in the grass. In the flowers. In songs.”
APRIL
7. The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
Notes and Favorites: Jacobs’ interactions with his wife, Julie, and his son, Jasper, were my favorite parts of this book. I liked his writing and humor, but as a rule follower, just thinking about so many “thou shalt nots” stressed me out.
8. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Notes and Favorites: I read this book while I watched the TV show. I don't know if I have ever read a book about a killing that simultaneously made me laugh and left me with such a powerful sense of sisterhood. I am not normally a Chick Lit reader, but I am sold on this author.
9. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Notes and Favorites: The opening quotations bring to mind Donald Trump. Just sayin’:
“The best way to drive out the devil . . . is to meet and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” Luther
“The devil . . . prowde spirite . . . cannot endure to be mocked.” Thomas More
MAY
I finished nothing in May.
JUNE
10. My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
Notes and Favorites: I not only enjoyed her anecdotes, starting from an early age of road tripping with her free-spirited father, but I learned a lot about American history and culture through the eyes of a seasoned traveler. A few readers who reviewed this memoir online complained about its lack of organization, but I didn’t find that to be true at all. It’s not chronological. It’s organized thematically. She writes anecdotes about family, social connections, culture, and history, all of them tied to her personal experiences on the road.
11. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Notes and Favorites: I hope nobody takes away my literature lover card for saying this, but I liked this more than The Goldfinch. I would guess it also influenced Special Topics in Calamity Physics, another favorite of mine. Maybe I just prefer murder mysteries to stolen artwork mysteries. “The dead appear to us in dreams . . . because that's the only way they can make us see them . . .”
JULY
12. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Notes and Favorites: First in the MaddAddam trilogy. This world she has created should serve as a warning to us. I’m going to leave it there . . . for now.
AUGUST
13. Al Franken: Giant of the Senate by Al Franken
Notes and Favorites: Who knew that Stuart Smalley was a result of Franken’s involvement in Al-Anon’s twelve-step program? “But I really think that if we don’t start caring about whether people tell the truth or not, it’s going to be literally impossible to restore anything approaching a reasonable political discourse.”
Of course, I read this book before his scandal and resignation. Now it just seems disappointing. Memoirs, ugh.
14. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Notes and Favorites: Second in the MaddAddam trilogy. “So music is built in, Glenn said: it’s knitted into us. It would be very hard to amputate it because it’s an essential part of us, like water.”
SEPTEMBER
I finished nothing in September.
OCTOBER
15. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
Notes and Favorites: Any performer can relate to the last description at the end of the book, standing on stage in the pitch black, a moment of panic, wondering if you made a mistake. Then the energy from the audience hits you. Brownstein says about this experience, "I was home.”
16. MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Notes and Favorites: Third in the MaddAddam trilogy. “Because if these people cannot sing, they will be like . . . they will be like nothing. They will be like stones.” p 290
NOVEMBER
I finished nothing in November. Three months of no books finished. Could that have contributed to my reading challenge #epicfail?
DECEMBER
17. Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace
Notes and Favorites: The description of Grace's daughter's birth is sweet and poignant. It’s clear that her child acts as a beacon throughout her grueling tour schedule, her gender dysphoria, and her drug and alcohol addiction.
18. California by Edan Lepucki
Notes and Favorites: I must be into dystopian novels this year. Does that say something about my lack of optimism in the state of our country right now?
Other stats: I read 6446 pages this year, averaging 358 pages per book, my longest book being 562 pages. I guess that doesn't sound too shabby even though I fell two books shy. Better luck to me in 2018!
I have already heard from some of my Facebook friends, but I am curious about the rest of you:
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