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Reflecting on 2019

Reading was once my favorite.

Long before obligations and adult responsibilities crept into my life, I spent my summers reading on a blanket in the sun in the front yard. I devoured my “chapter books” filled with adventure, mystery, and high school drama. I loved Nancy Drew, The Boxcar Children, and Goosebumps. My mom challenged me to add in “The Classics” suggesting The Catcher and the Rye or Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. Reading was encouraged. iPhones and social media didn’t exist yet. Life was simple.

2019 was the year I fell back in love with reading. Early in the year, my cousin invited me to join her Book Club. I agreed, but it was an extra-curricular activity I wasn’t sure I could fully commit to. I wanted to do it even if I wasn’t sure if I could find the time. Challenging myself to read more often and connecting with amazing women once a month could only bring good things. Before that, books would pop up into my life every now and then. I usually took the opportunity of a long plane ride to dive into a good book and power down my phone completely. I can usually get through two or three books during holiday break or a beach vacation. Reading Nicholas Sparks, on location, visiting my family in North Carolina is the best way to pass the day. Suntan, sunshine, and sea breeze.

I have been a fan of Goodreads App for a long time. I use it when I walk into any bookstore or library to remember what books I have been wanting to read. It helps you organize your books into “shelves”. I have three: Currently Reading, Want to Read, and Read. Every year the app would ask me to set a reading goal for how many books read for the year. In 2017, I read 6 books. In 2018, I set a goal to read 12. That is only 1 per month and I ended up reading 17. So in 2019, I set a goal to read 30 books. It was about double what I read the year before and I knew I would be more motivated than the year prior with the help of my Book Club.

Reading brought me back into the world I love. I was able to turn my ‘work-brain’ off and make room for more creativity and learning.

In 2019, I read 37 books! Now… I didn’t make it to every Book Club meeting, nor did I read every book we selected. I did read quite a few books outside of my comfort zone. I read books that I wouldn’t have chosen based on their genre or the cover art. Reading more brought me back to the world I once loved as a young girl. It has helped learn how to turn off my ‘work-brain’ and make room for more creativity and happiness to my everyday.

I usually prefer to sit and read physical books, but my schedule and the busy world we live in doesn’t allow me that luxury. Some of the books I completed last year were in the form of audio books. Listening to books on my drive in bookended my day before and after work nicely. In some cases, I was so interested to find out what happened next in whatever I was reading that I started listening to my books while running. Listening during a long run was able to take the place of a training partner when I couldn’t find anyone to join me.

My favorite audio books were the ones the author read, such as Michelle Obama’s Becoming, Scott Jurek’s North, and University of Portland Alum Kunal Nayyer’s Yes, My Accent Is Real. There is nothing more humbling than training to race only 26.2 miles of a marathon while listening to Scott Jurek’s 2000 mile trek along every step of the Appalachian Trail.

Ask For It and Myth of the Nice Girl were both books that boosted my confidence in the workplace. I learned tactics for negotiation and read success stories of other professional women asking for what they want when it comes to their career. I shared both books with co-workers and girlfriends who would also love the learnings shared.

For 2020, I set the goal to read 60 books doubling my 2019 goal. This will be challenging because while I did read almost 40 books last year, a goal of 60 books is a little more than 1 per week. If you have any book recommendations, please send them my way.

Here is the list of books I read in 2019:

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