Reading Through Winter Break

Goodreads has been great for me to chronicle the books that I’ve read and enjoyed throughout the past several years. Looking back at 2020, I was pretty disappointed with the amount of books I read. It’s understandable with the pandemic, but I would’ve thought that I’d be forced to read more.

Of course, that wasn’t the case because, at the very start of 2020, I already stopped reading for pleasure. The time that I enjoyed reading books was replaced with worrying about my future job. At HB, I already knew that things weren’t looking good with enrollment and budget. I was anticipating the worst and in response to that, I threw myself into studying for the CSET subtest III which covers Calculus. I never took it before because I thought I’d only want to teach middle school. But these days I can’t be picky. Plus, maybe having a full math credential rather than a fundamental one, I would look more appealing than other candidates. So that’s what I did - study for the first three months. After that, instead of reading a lot, I worked on applications to districts and prepared for interviews. Plus I made a bunch of videos for distance learning. All of that was great, but it also meant that I had much less time to read.

Of my goal to read 18 books in 2020, I only read 14. Good but definitely not great. The best books I read that year were The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. That last one was for a book club run by Meg and Dia which was really fun and kept me saner than I would have been during the early stages of the pandemic. We read that, Ender’s Game, and Daisy Jones & the Six. All were pretty good but The Goldfinch was really something. And that’s influencing what I want to read next. I really want to check out The Secret History since that’s supposed to be the quintessential Dark Academia book. And apparently, I really like that stuff.

Speaking of which, here are the books that I’m currently reading: The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson, Educated by Tara Westover (audiobook), and The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. The last one is a Dark Academia book as well that I’m thoroughly enjoying. I think this is the perfect mix of books to read concurrently. A fiction book, a nonfiction book, and an audiobook that is dissimilar to the other books I’m reading. I also just finished reading Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran on audiobook and it was well worth using one of my Audible credits. That’s the other thing. Listening to audiobooks is the best when it’s an autobiography read by the author - especially a comedian. Recently I read Mixed Plate by Jo Koy and Yearbook by Seth Rogen on audiobook and they were both hilarious to listen to. So those three seem like a great way to start the year with books. Two physical books - one fiction and the other non-fiction, and an audiobook for the car. As long as the books aren’t too similar to each other, I think that’s the perfect mix if I’ll be reading multiple books at once. Hopefully, this trend continues and I don’t fall off with my reading.