37 Reasons I Loved Failing The Book-A-Week Challenge

At the end of 2016, I saw a trend in my Facebook news feed. Many of my friends had completed the Book-A-Week Challenge - 52 books in 52 weeks. After reading their reading lists and being greatly impressed at their literary choices, I remembered how many books I had read that year.

None.

Unless you count law textbooks and magazines, I had not picked up a single book. I told myself that I was too pressed for time as a full-time university student and that these friends of mine were super-achievers who had a freakish talent for speed reading. I have to admit I did feel a bit of resentment because here were people reading books that I wanted to read. They had accomplished what I had failed to do.

So at the start of 2017 I decided that I would attempt the Book-A-Week challenge. I went into the year not knowing whether I would actually read 52 books but I knew I definitely wanted to push myself to make reading a major part of my life again. After all I was the girl in high school who would get in trouble in maths class for reading instead of doing my work.

Alas, I did not finish or even start reading 52 books this year but I don't care. This year reading did become a major part of my life and having the goal kept me on track. I refused to fall into the trap of choosing short books so I could literally read one book each book. Instead I read the books I've always wanted to read - tomes that would have been impossible for me to read in one week. And I have no regrets.

I'll challenge myself to read the Book-A-Week Challenge again in 2018 but rather than one book per week, I'll aim to read 52 books throughout the year. That way I can have the flexibility to read more or less as my commitments fluctuate.

So without further ado, here are the books I read in 2017:

1. Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ -Giulia Enders

The gut has not only a remarkable system of nerves to gather all this information, but also a huge surface area. That makes it the body’s largest sensory organ. Eyes, ears, nose, or the skin pale by comparison. The information they gather is received by the conscious mind and used to formulate a response to our environment. They can be seen as life’s parking sensors. The gut, by contrast, is a huge matrix, sensing our inner life and working on the subconscious mind.

A good, if slightly simplistic, introduction to digestive health.

2. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradburry

There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

Love, love, loved it.

3. The Course of Love - Alain de Botton

The partner truly best suited to us is not the one who miraculously happens to share every taste, but the one who can negotiate differences in taste with intelligence and grace.

A lot of things I agreed with and a fair few things I didn't agree with.

4. The Dangers of Truffle Hunting - Suni Overend

Kit didn't need to do what she wanted to do, she needed to do what she needed.

The solitude of the bath house made her feel uncomfortable and that made it the exact place she needed to be. For hours she went without talking. The simplicity and discipline of the place made her feel lonely, and for that reason she stayed.

Self containment: she would perfect it.

A life unaffected by others: she would achieve it.

I walked past Dymmocks and was drawn in by its glossy cover and its mention of my favourite fungus. It was only half-way through the book I found it entertaining.

5. A Short History of Stupid - Bernard Keane; Helen Razer

Stupid isn't just ignorance; it's not just laziness. Worse than the absence of thought, Stupid is a virus that drains our productivity and leaves us sick and diminished. And Stupid has a long, complex and terrible past, one we need to understand in order to defeat it.

Yeah nah.

6. The Happiness Project -Gretchen Rubin

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.

Bought it spur-of-the-moment at Kikki K. Easy reading.

7. The Fall and Rise of China - Richard Baum

Great overview of modern Chinese history since the early 19th century.

8. Anna Karenina -Leo Tolstoy

Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

Tolstoy's knowledge of and empathy with human behaviors is brilliant. Best book I read all year.

9. Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling

If I’m at a party where I’m not enjoying myself, I will put some cookies in my jacket pocket and leave without saying good-bye.

Good book.

10. Why Not Me? - Mindy Kaling

People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That’s a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a man’s touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I don’t understand how you could have self-confidence if you don’t do the work... I have never, ever, ever, met a high confident person and successful person who is not what a movie would call a 'workaholic.' Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it.

Also a good book.

11. The Old Man and The Sea - Ernest Hemmingway

No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.

First Hemmingway book I've read to date. Different to what I was expecting.

12. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right - Arlie Russell Hochschild

If the power elite want to forget about pollution, and if they impose structural amnesia on a community, you need an omnipotent mind to remember how things once were. You needed, the Arenos felt, God.

A great read if you want to understand why the Tea Party exists and why the people who would seemingly benefit the most from a welfare state reject it. 10/10

13. The Art of Travel - Alain de Botton

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

A nice way to prepare oneself for a long sojourn abroad.

14. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Still relevant.

15. Go Set A Watchman - Harper Lee

A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.

Felt relevant to me as a young woman. It deals wonderfully with the struggles of disillusionment.

16. When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

Absolutely beautiful writing, both the prose and reflections.

17. Diary of an Oxygen Thief - Anonymous

Maybe there is a law after all. Of nature. Like gravity. An unwritten axiom that governs our emotional dealings. What you do comes back to you with twice the force, [sic] it, three times the force. We are not punished for our sins we are punished by them.

A bit of an unpleasant protagonist (antagonist?) but nevertheless unputdownable.

18. The Scott Pilgrim Comics - Bryan Lee O'Malley

Let's be friends based on mutual hate.

Really fun and funny comics to devour. Six comics altogether.

19. Milk and Honey - Rupi Kaur

you tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but i was not made with a fire in my belly so i could be put out i was not made with a lightness on my tongue so i could be easy to swallow i was made heavy half blade and half silk difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow

Beautiful.

20. The Sun and Her Flowers - Rupi Kaur

it isn't what we left behind that breaks me it's whatever we could've built had we stayed

Also beautiful.

21. The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving A F**k - Sarah Knight

You may not realize it, but the number of [sic]s you personally have to give is a finite and precious commodity.

Overrated and full of profanity for the sake of profanity.

22. Understanding Japan: A Cultural History

An alright summary of Japanese history but a little too simplistic for my liking.

23. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.

A splendidly written book that hit a little too close to home at times. A must-read.

24. Collaborating with the Enemy - Adam Kahane

An interesting explanation of 'stretch collaboration' and increasing need to be used in increasingly diverse workplaces.

25. I Was Told There'd Be Cake - Sloane Crosley

'Hey there.' I cleared my throat. 'How are you?'

'I'm engaged!' Incidentally, this is an unacceptable answer to that question.

Thought it would be like Lena Dunham's writing but it was worse. Would not recommend.

26. The Empathy Exams - Leslie Jamison

Sure, some news is bigger news than other news. War is bigger news than a girl having mixed feelings about the way some guy [sic] her and didn't call. But I don't believe in a finite economy of empathy; I happen to think that paying attention yields as much as it taxes. You learn to start seeing.

Liked the book so much I bought it after borrowing it from the library.

27. The Trial - Franz Kafka

It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

Boring. Will not read again.

28. Hillbilly Elegy - J.D. Vance

Whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, 'The feeling that our choices don’t matter.'

Interesting and unique perspective on social mobility in the USA.

29. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

Eh, a bit overrated tbh. I felt the deductions about women's behaviour were a bit dated but otherwise an entertaining read.

30. The Sign of Four - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.

See above.

31. Vagabonding - Rolf Potts

Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises.

A lot of the advice was redundant considering its publication date.

32. Solitude - Robert Kull

We often seem to value activity above all else, but like all beings we need to rest and recuperate. I suspect the widespread occurrence of depression in our culture is linked to our refusal to allow ourselves quiet time. Feeling the need to remain constantly busy – mentally or physically – in socially productive activity can prevent us from turning inward to simply be with ourselves. Such inward turning requires time and might lower productivity and social standing. It is not that all activity is bad, but many of us are far out of balance and our activity does not come from a place of stillness and wisdom.

Really interesting book about a man who demonstrates that you can start new career paths and interests at any time in your life and that life does not end when you turn thirty. His meditations on spirituality, living in the moment and being in nature were especially poignant.

33. A Field Guild to Getting Lost - Rebecca Solnit

I wonder now about Demeter and Persephone. Maybe Persephone was glad to run off with the king of death to his underground realm, maybe it was the only way she could break away from her mother, maybe Demeter was a bad parent the way Lear was a bad parent, denying nature, including the nature of children to leave their parents. Maybe Persephone thought Hades was the infinitely cool older man who held the knowledge she sought, maybe she loved the darkness, the six months of winter, the sharp taste of pomegranates, the freedom from her mother, maybe she knew that to be truly alive death had to be part of the picture just as winter must. It was as the queen of hell that she became an adult and came into power. Hades’s realm is called the underworld, and so are the urban realms of everything outside the law. And as in Hopi creation myths, where humans and other beings emerge from underground, so it’s from the underground that culture emerges in this civilization.

A nice little read.

34. Turtles All The Way Down - John Green

In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt. It felt like we were in some place your body can't visit, some place with no ceiling and no walls and no floor and no instruments.

An enjoyable read with some thought-provoking moments.

35. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone - Olivia Laing

Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorise. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair.

Definitely need to reread this again. Beautiful prose.

36. Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me - Bill Hayes

O: 'The most we can do is to write - intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively - about what it is like living in the world at this time'.

A beautiful book full of beautiful anecdotes about life in the Big Apple, overcoming loss and being in love.

37. Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy - Michael Soussan

My meetings with some of the other colleagues in the office had quickly turned into venting sessions. They all seemed highly frustrated at someone or something, but it was too hard to understand who, or what, because they referred to everything in acronyms.

'The MDOU are offended that the UNOHCI report includes only inputs from UNGOU, UNICEF (Ok, I knew that one) thinks WFP and UNCHS should have a seat at the UNSECORD meetings.'

Wuah?

A whistleblower's look about what it's like working at UN. I loved it.

#musings #bookaweek #reading #52booksin52weeks