My Year in Books: 2023

Another year has come and gone. Despite the insane global events, I seem to have reached the point in my life when I can finally say I’m in a good place. In 2023, the wins were more than the losses – a new job, healthier lifestyle, better work-life balance, and some interesting adventures. I was also happy to regain my love for reading, which I had missed in 2022. I didn’t quite hit my reading target, but I finished 28 books (some quite hefty ones) and came very close to reaching my 10,000-page goal. I also indulged in the book-buying hobby, resulting in several books in my TBR pile that I’m looking forward to reading in 2024.

My Year in Books: 2022

Another difficult year is ending, and it’s time to reflect on my wins and losses. As much as there have been quite a few wins, my reading goals are not among them. It has probably been my worst year of reading in a long time. I was so overwhelmed with work and travel (also for work) that it was challenging to carve out some time for other things. I also struggled a lot with picking the ‘right’ reading material. I only managed to read 25 books in 2022 (less than my usual minimum of 30 books), and I came nowhere near my 10 000-page goal (got stuck at 6 907). I also made a new record of books I did not finish. Those were mostly non-fiction that my brain refused to process. It almost felt like I was trying to find a perfectly engaging story that would allow me to switch off and enjoy the book but fail at it over and over again.

European Book Challenge: Round II

In 2020, I came up with the idea to read at least one book from each European country in about five years. I looked into my geographical reading footprint and discovered that I’ve read books from only 12 European countries, which seemed a bit ignorant. So I made a plan to tackle five books/countries each year or reading round. The first round flew by quickly, and I finished the first five books in only six months. However, the second round got me stuck. I’ll admit that I hit a bit of a reading slump in 2021. But the choice of countries/books didn’t help either. Therefore, I’m ready to face the ugly truth: I need to move forward with the challenge without completing all five books in Round II. I’m simply unable to pick up and start reading Svetlana Alexievich’s ‘Zinky Boys’ (Belarus) that’s been sitting in my TBR pile for more than a year. If not for the war in Ukraine, I might have had the courage to go there. But now, we all need a bit of escape from the war news, so I can’t force myself to read it. However, I’ve read books from the four other countries nominated for Round II: Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, and Ukraine. And my literary map of Europe is starting to look a bit better!

My literary map of Europe on 24.04.2022 (source of the base map)

My year in books: 2021

I can’t believe that we’re almost at the end of one more year with COVID-19. At this stage, the saying’ time flies’ might need a rebranding to ‘time disappears,’ and not in a positive way. It was a tough reading year for me. I managed to read my annual minimum of 30 books (quite a few hefty ones) and exceed the 10,000-page goal by a couple of hundred (10,258 pages, to be precise). And that’s about it on the achievements front! I only got through four classics that I had planned for my Back to the Classics Challenge 2021, which isn’t enough to even write a wrap-up post. I also got completely stuck with my European Book Challenge, although the last two books for the second round have been sitting on my shelf for a long, long time. It was tough for me to focus on reading, and I struggled to pick up the right books. It was especially difficult to focus on non-fiction books as I seemed to need an interesting story to drown out the background noise in my head. Consequently, my nominations list will be a little bit shorter this year.

Back to the Classics Challenge 2021: Classic by a BIPOC Author

Coming from Eastern Europe, I’m not going to pretend that I fully or even remotely understand the issues surrounding black, indigenous, and other people of color. Don’t get me wrong, I have worked for and with people from different backgrounds and races when living in the UK and Germany. But I guess I haven’t come face to face with the type of racial discrimination that seems to be making more and more news headlines also on our side of the pond. I have had conversations with my non-white colleagues about their experiences, especially in the workplace. And I know it has not always been smooth sailing. However, I’m also aware that my everyday reality is too far removed from theirs to fully comprehend their situation. So, it’s a great motivation to educate myself a little bit on the black history in the USA through some literature inspired by this year’s Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen on her Books and Chocolate blog. And for the category of a classic by a BIPOC author, I’ve chosen Maya Angelou’s autobiographical book ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,’ suggested by Elena, who is also participating in the challenge.

Back to the Classics Challenge 2021: Classic by a New-to-Me Author

The one thing I love about joining reading challenges is that I get to discover new authors. More than once, it has lead to new favorite books (plural because there is no such thing as THE favorite book). This year Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen on her Books and Chocolate blog has a special category dedicated to New-to-the-Reader (me) authors. I picked out Winston Graham’s novel Marnie that had been waiting in my TBR pile for more than a year or two. I remember that Marnie was an impulse buy back in the day when taking your time to browse around in a bookstore was still a thing. I love reading a good thriller once in a while, and I figured that Alfred Hitchcock wouldn’t have based his movie on any old boring book. It’s my first read by Winston Graham despite his long list of novels. The name Poldark, however, rings a bell, so I might not be all that hopeless.

Back to the Classics Challenge 2021: Classic by a Favorite Author

I discovered Nevil Shute’s books by accident a couple of years ago. I just randomly picked up his book A Town Like Alice in a bookstore for a light summer read. Little did I know that I’ve unearthed a master storyteller that will instantly become one of my favorite classic authors. Since then, I keep one or two of Shute’s books on my shopping wish list; therefore, it was an easy choice for this year’s Back to the Classics Challenge. After some deliberation, I picked out Shute’s novel No Highway. As always, I didn’t really know what type of story I will get because Shute can pretty much write anything.

My Year in Books: 2020

What a year! I bet many people around the world are happy to see it come to an end. For me personally, it hasn’t been all that bad. Of course, I miss traveling and seeing my friends and family or going to movies and concerts but we’re going to get back to some form of normality soon enough (hopefully!). Interestingly (or maybe predictably), I’ve been taking my escape in books. I’ve read 37 books which is, I’m sure, my all-time record. According to Goodreads stats, it has amounted to 12 561 pages – way over my annual objective of 10 000 pages! I tried to diversify my geographical reading footprint through European Book Challenge and it has led me to discover some new favorites. I’m also starting to enjoy fiction and non-fiction adventure stories which is something quite new to me. Moreover, I seem to be reading a lot more in my native language – 17 of all the books I’ve read in 2020 were in Latvian. My TBR pile has also been constantly growing and I’m trying to remind myself that I don’t need more books. Alas, it only works sometimes!

Back to the Classics Challenge 2021

The end of the so-called terrible year is almost here and it’s time to start making plans for the next one. I skipped the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020 but I feel it’s something I want to pick up again for the next year. So, this is my sign-up post for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 hosted by Karen K. on her Books and Chocolate blog. It’s a year-long challenge in which I will try to read at least six classics that are already sitting on my shelf or will be in the near future (the ultimate goal is 12 but that usually doesn’t happen). I like to put together a preliminary list of reading material for this challenge to make it more fun.

European Book Challenge: Round I

It’s been an interesting and challenging year so far. I know that many have struggled with their reading in times of COVID-19 but I’ve had the opposite experience. I’ve managed to read more even when many of my workdays have been filled with scientific reading. As a result, I’m way ahead with all my reading challenges (not that there’s many of those this year). So I’m happy to report 6 months early that I’m done with my first round of the European Book Challenge. I’ve read books from all 5 countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Estonia, and Lithuania) and I’m looking forward to continuing my literary journey.

 

My literary map of Europe on 20.06.2020 (source of the base map)