My Reading List: What’s Left and What’s to Come

My reading list this year was ambitious, and I feel like I haven’t made much of a dent! That said, I hold onto hope that I can pull off the possimpible.

Earlier this year, I made the resolution that I would finish up the books on my reading list from 2020. However, while reflecting on the list this past weekend, I came to terms with the fact that I hadn’t done much to accomplish that goal.

To begin with, I set out to read 21 books in this year. Specifically, my reading list was aimed at 21 books from the past year’s reading list. If I had read a book a week, I could have knocked this out less than six months into the year. But life got in the way!

While I cannot say I’m not disappointed, I don’t fully blame myself, either. Firstly, when I think about this past year, I don’t have many days or nights where I just sat and did nothing upon nothing. For instance, a lot of my nights have been filled with coding, or going on walks, or watching a new TV show, or a movie I’ve never seen.

Secondly, while I had my reading list all queued in front of me, I found myself reading books outside my list! Yes! I read books on French culture, poetry collections, and rediscovered a passion for romance novels.

However, I cannot BS myself too much: ten minutes of reading a night would have been better than none! When I look at my reading list of 21 books, I realize now that I have only accomplished a third of that list. Because I am acutely aware of this misstep, a large part of me wants to see it through to the end. In short, I want to try to read fourteen books in the next 12 weeks.

Here’s what I have left to read:

1. The Stranger Beside Me
2. Small Sacrifices
3. Wasted
4. Code Red
5. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been
6. Save the Cat
7. On Writing
8. Reaper Man
9. My Own Words
10. In Praise of Difficult Women
11. You Play the Girl
12. The Brand Gap
13. Top of the Rock
14. A Raisin in the Sun

If some of these titles sound more than familiar, it’s because I’ve been dragging my feet in chipping away at them! I’ve been reading “On Writing” for the past six months, it seems. In addition, I started “You Play the Girl” in 2020, and being a collection of essays, I have read two essays in the compilation.

As I mentioned earlier, I reflected on this list earlier this weekend. This reflection was triggered after I finished watching “White Lotus!” I watched it all in two days. I loved it! However, one thing stuck with me: all of these people at this gorgeous paradise hotel sat poolside for five days. What do you do poolside? You read. Two of the characters, notably, seem to go through four books over the course of five days. However, within the layers of the show, it’s fair to question if these two characters actually read the books. To clarify, it’s possible they did not, or that they merely skimmed them to seem enlightened!

Someone shared the full list of books read by each character in the show on Buzzfeed. It seems that a lot of the books read, or even just “read,” were seminal. Essential reading, if you will. Given the, let’s call it, spiciness of discourse in the world right now, I had been wanting to educate myself a bit more on things outside my bubble. Consequently, I figured if I read those books, along with “You Play the Girl” and “In Praise of Difficult Women,” I can learn something! Or, at least, pretend like I read theory. As a result, my reading list went from fourteen to twenty-three.

Typical me: rather than accepting defeat on a goal, I double down and make it even more challenging. Thus, my main point. I have been quietly working on my weight loss goal for 22… years. My goals are always lofty, but I tend to give up and give myself more work in the long run. I’m done with that! You know what the difference between success and failure is? Commitment. So, with that in mind, I took a look at my reading list of what was left from 2020. Then, I added all of the books mentioned in “White Lotus.” After that, I looked at the list of poetry books, short story collections, and creative nonfictions I had building up in my “I want to read that” list. With that, I had a combined list of sixty titles to read.

To clarify, I’m not saying I have sixty pounds of weight to lose. However, I think that sixty books is an ambitious list. I also think that my reading list can serve as a barometer for my weight loss goals, if I truly commit to them. Wouldn’t it be nice to say “I reached my target, sixty books later?”

So, behold, my reading list yellow brick road.

1. The Stranger Beside Me – Ann Rule
2. Small Sacrifices – Ann Rule
3. Wasted – Linda Wolfe
4. Code Red – Lisa Lister
5. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been – Joyce Carol Oates
6. Save the Cat – Blake Snyder
7. On Writing – Stephen King
8. Reaper Man – Terry Pratchett
9. My Own Words – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
10. In Praise of Difficult Women – Karen Karbo
11. You Play the Girl – Carina Chocano
12. The Brand Gap – Marty Neumeier
13. Top of the Rock – Warren Littlefield
14. A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
15. Literally show me a healthy person – Darcie Wilder 
16. No one belongs here more than you – Miranda July 
17. Tonight I’m Someone Else – Chelsea Hodson 
18. How to Cure a Ghost – Fariha Roisin 
19. So Sad Today – Melissa Border 
20. The Houseguest: And Other Stories – Amparo Davila
21. Sea of Strangers – Lang Leav 
22. Can’t and Won’t: Stories – Lydia Davis 
23. Black Swans: Stories – Eve Babitz
24. The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington- Leonora Carrington
25. My Policeman – Bethan Roberts 
26. Notes on Camp – Susan Sontag
27. Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame – Charles Bukowski
28. Love is a Dog From hell – Charles Bukowski
29. You Get So Alone at times it Just Makes Sense – Charles Bukowski
30. Rumi: Selected Poems – Rumi 
31. The Waste Land + Other Poems – TS Eliot 
32. Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
33. The Course of Love – Alain de Botton 
34. Essays in Love – Alain de Botton 
35. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
36. Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time – Rob Sheffield 
37. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami 
38. The Wind-Up Bird chronicle – Haruki Murakami
39. The White Album – Joan Didion
40. The Portable Nietzche – Friedrich Nietzche
41. The Interpretation of Dreams – Sigmund Freud 
42. My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante 
43. Sexual Personae – Camille Paglia
44. The Wretched of the Earth – Frantz Fanon
45. Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
46. Gender Trouble – Judith Butler 
47. Discourse on Colonialism – Aime Cesaire
48. Ecrits – Jacques Lacan
49. It – Stephen King 
50. Women Who Kill – Al Cimino
51. Victoria – A.N. Wilson 
52. Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You – Misha Collins 
53. You’ll come back to yourself – Michaela Angemeer
54. Please Love Me At My Worst – Michaela Angemeer
55. Be(loved) – Dakota Adan
56. Flowers on the Moon – Billy Chapata 
57. The Anatomy of Story – John Truby
58. In Real Life – Leticia Sala
59. Serenity – SF Yousaf
60. Soul Music – Terry Pratchett

I also reserve the right to dislike a book and exchange it for anything written by Amanda Lovelace, whose poetry has haunted me every time I visit a Barnes and Noble.

Certainly, my reading list varies in genre, length, and likely, enjoyment. Hopefully they all give me something to think about, when I cannot stop thinking about eating spoonfuls of Nutella straight from the jar like a heathen. Now, to finish my steps, and then chip away at this list until I float off to dreamland. THAT’s how I sleep at night!