Book Lists

I used to be an avid reader.

Years ago, I'd create a list in December of the books that I planned to read in the following year, and often I would exceed that list. I'd often read between 20 and 24 books each year.

And then I got busy in the evenings and I didn't read as much. And, over the years, I seemingly stopped reading altogether, being lucky to even read one book over the course of a year.

I stopped making reading lists in 2013.

Pretty sad for a writer to give up reading books.

The last time I picked up a book was in December, 2021. I had purchased a copy of Montreal author extraordinaire Heather O'Neill's novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, and was determined to read it while DW and I were vacationing in Cuba. I only got about two-thirds of the way through the book by the time our vacation was over.

As much as I had been enjoying the book, when I returned home I slipped into my regular evening routine, and even though the novel was on my bedside table, I never picked it up again. The indigo cover gathered dust for more than a year.

Last month, however, when DW and I were packing for our trip to Mexico, I saw the book and told myself that on this vacation, I was going to finish this book. I also had other books that were collecting dust on my bookshelves that I hadn't cracked open, and for Christmas, Kid 1 had given me a book by one of my favourite authors, Ian Rankin.

I had to get back to reading. And so, Heather O'Neill was coming with me.

Because I wanted to refresh myself with The Lonely Hearts Hotel, I started reading it from the beginning, even though I had a bookmark in Chapter 50, where I had left off. But to speed up the reading of the first two-thirds of the book, I downloaded the audio version of the novel and played it at 1.25 times the normal speed, which I later learned is much slower than my actual reading speed.

When I reached Chapter 50, I picked up the paper copy and started reading; only, because I had become accustomed to the narrator's voice, I continued to play the audio version, bumping up the speed to 1.5 times the normal speed.

I finished the book on our flight from Cancun to Toronto, otherwise known as the first leg in our journey through Hell. (The book is amazing, by the way. I highly recommend it.)

I have two more books that I've stacked on my bedside table and I have promised myself that I'd start reading them, starting immediately. However, because one of the novels is the Ian Rankin book that Kid 1 gave me and there are a couple of Rankin's books on which I'm behind, I'll have to get to those ones first.

But I'm back to creating a reading list—the first one in a decade. Have you any recommendations? Leave them in the Comments, below.

I'll post my 2023 list in the coming days.