Now, we've found ourselves already two weeks in, I've read one and a half books so far, and I haven't even managed to string together enough letters, sentences, and paragraphs to publish a blogpost in over a month.
Let's change that, and take a look at my Year in Books for 2019! Trust me... there's a lot of ground to cover.
All in all, it's not my best work: My total is a little over 1,250 pages behind what I read last year. I also have an average number of pages-per-book that falls about seven pages lower than the same average last year, as well, so that would also affect those numbers.
I read substantially more Nonfiction this year, which can be explained by the number of Memoirs I picked up for NaNoWriMo (but more on that in a minute). As a result, I read less Fiction, and that includes both Graphic Novels and Romance Novels, which I've seen a lot more of in the past two years of my reading.
My shortest novel wasn't as short as it was last year, and my longest read is almost a hundred pages shorter than last year's longest, too. But neither of those stats mean much to me... what actually ended up drawing my attention was my ratings preferences: On average, last year, I ranked books at a 3.9 out of 5 stars, and in recording that information, I thought that it seemed pretty high. This year, the number came out as 4.2. Are my ratings slipping, or am I just getting too easily amused?
But those are just the numbers. Let's talk about some of my greatest reading trends in the past year:
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| First book haul of 2019... on January 10th. |
I made one of my mini-reading resolutions for 2019 to stop buying so many books, due to the 147 books left unread on my TBR shelves as of December 2018. Contrary to that decision, the number has only ballooned higher... especially when I kicked off January and February 2019 by purchasing 13 more new reads from Book Outlet and Goodwill, using the excuse that three were for gifts. Of those ten left, I've only read four across the entire year. Math has never been my strong suit, but even I know that's ridiculous. And again, that was just the first two months of the year.
Style and Content Updates... and Other Excuses
You might have noticed - but probably not, we're all busy - my prolonged absences from this writing space in the past year. This led to, no doubt, my worst blogging year on record, with most months seeing only between 1 and 3 posts published, especially in the second half of the year. This was from a number of decisions on my part: you see, I was desperately trying to find a "reason" for my blog.
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| My style guide, which I actually love. |
To be fair, they were right, as having a specific audience in mind, and a compelling website design, can absolutely help build a comprehensive brand; however, that's not what builds an audience: links, clicks, authentic voice, and, you know, regular post publishing do. That's not what I was focusing on. At that point, I think I was just looking for a reason to stay on this platform, and I thought making it pretty would help.
The truth came to light in July, as I confessed - on Playing in the Pages' Ninth Birthday, no less - that I had been considering eliminating this blog entirely. That post was the first time I'd written since May. The ironic thing is, I spend a good deal of it lamenting how my attention had been so skewed towards creating something "shareable" or resume-worthy, that I had stopped feeling genuine or reading books I found worth posting about, and vowing to turn this space back into something personal and fun... when in actuality, I spent the rest of the year doing the opposite of that!
The only posts that made the cut for the rest of the year, were either general reviews - delivered piecemeal in wide batches, so that none of their individual titles felt all that worthy - or large, in-depth coverage of specific authors I enjoyed (for a favorite: read my deconstruction of Happy Ending tropes, by way of my latest "Reading Romance" series installment here). While they are, in my humble opinion, pretty good, they were daunting to write, and all the less enjoyable for which to plan and read. My profiles on Jasmine Guillory's accessible takes on Intersectional Feminism, or Taylor Jenkins Reid's ability to translate the personal and impersonal through what I called Mediated Intimacy, are definitely among some of my more comprehensive and formal writing on this platform, they also helped turn off those parts of my brain that were just reading for a good time, and turned my writing into... a product.
Which honestly didn't make me want to read at all, let alone write.
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| Some of the slump advice I compiled. |
I found a brief respite in my slump-after-slump hit parade this year around the middle of April. I was already lagging behind on my Goodreads Challenge, and felt like I needed a boost... besides, it was a rare free weekend for me, and if I didn't use it to my best advantage, chances were someone else would fill my schedule for me. It was only after a chance scrolling through my Instagram, that I recognized it was the first weekend of Coachella, and decided to go with a theme; hence, my own personal read-a-thon - or "Readchella," as I dubbed it - was born!
The four books I read that weekend ended up serving as not only the success I needed to get back into the groove of reading regularly (and among the first books I'd finished since February), but also became some of the only regular blog posts I uploaded this past Spring. With day-by-day updates detailing tips I'd found for beating a reading slump, or tracking through the progress I was making, or explaining the logic behind the reading recommendations that had actually helped, it made for a self-motivated activity that kept me accountable and focused on a specific goal, which ended up helping me regain my confidence in my favorite hobby... at least for a little while, before the next slump hit.
NaNoWriMo 2019 Raised the StakesBy the time November rolled around, I was well and truly behind on my GR Challenge - into a double digit kind of level - but wasn't letting that dull my focus, which had resolutely shifted over to a different kind of annual effort: National Novel Writing Month. I was determined to try it again this year, and my focus was clearly set on writing at least a little bit of a Food Memoir, spurred on by the inspiration of dual Kathleen Flinn reads earlier in the year. I checked out a full stack of the genre from the library - at one point, picking up five holds on a Tuesday, and four more on a Wednesday - and decided that at the same time I was knuckling myself down to write, I'd be reading as much of the genre as possible.
But NaNo this year, ended up being a lot less than ideal. I was unprepared for how emotionally taxing and second-guess-inspiring writing personal-oriented Nonfiction would be, and it felt like none of the books I was reading were really helping me all that much. By the time I reached the end - limping across the finish line three days early, after writing nearly 9,000 words on my second-to-last-day just because I wanted to be done - I was even more burnt out than before, and seriously questioning my own motivations for both reading and writing.
I Really, Truly, Nearly Failed my Goodreads Challenge
As of December 1st, 2019, I was forced to confront an ugly truth: I was 13 - thirteen!! - books behind on my Goodreads Challenge for this past year. I had chosen the number 60, because it was actually much lower than goals I'd reached in the past, and I thought that by giving myself an easier target, it would free me up to make more daring and difficult reading choices.
While I did pick up a couple of hefty pieces of Nonfiction this year, this decision decidedly did not result in me challenging my genre choices; it challenged my ability to not annoy the dickens out of my family for the entire month of December. I mean, I read a total of three books in the last three days of 2019 alone, finishing the last one on New Year's Eve! Sure, I've come close before, but not that close.
And yes, you might be tempted to say that the Challenge is just a number, and it's more about personal motivation... but I've always been motivated by extrinsic values. Setting my goal is a choice I make with intention every year, an external factor that motivates me to take time for my favorite hobby every once in a while. I wasn't upset about lagging on my goal because not being a "winner" makes me sad, I was sad because I know that not regularly engaging in reading is a symptom of a greater part of my life that's been upset.
Needless to say, 2019 left me with a lot of thoughts about how things are going to proceed in the new year, in terms of not only my own personal reading goals, and writing focus, but also how I organize my life to my best advantage, a schedule that makes plenty of room and priority for reading and writing without judgement or hindrance.
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Whew. Full disclosure: by the time anyone actually reads this post, it will have endured a few rigorous rounds of self-editing, because I'm being very candid about all of this: 2019 brought a lot of good into my life, but it was not my year in a very definitive sense, and that absolutely extends to the kinds of life priorities you see detailed here.
That being said, I am fully prepared to make my happiness - and my reading - a more substantial personal focus in 2020. Here are some of the ways I plan on doing so, as pertain to this blog:
Stop Taking My Own Online Spaces So Seriously
I spent so much of the last year trying to make something of Playing in the Pages - be it a job-hunting asset, or a potential source of marketable writing material, or a social media boon - I really didn't acknowledge this space has been serving as a very special "something" to me already: my sandbox. I decide what goes here, how it's all built together, and whether it has to mean anything at all. In fact, it totally doesn't! When it comes down to it, some of my favorite blog material - like "Top Ten Tuesdays," personal challenges like "Readchella" or "book blind dates," and all of those damn planner posts - really aren't that marketable or portfolio-worthy, but they're the most fun to write!
And same thing with the Instagram: every second I spend trying to "grow my profile" has been one of abject misery. Once I stopped trying to optimize and filter every day of my presence there, and only really started using it to share things I thought were cool or show what I was spending my time reading, that I had a good experience. Similarly, once I stopped following accounts that made me feel negatively about my own reading abilities, living space, disposable income, etc., I was able to enjoy myself on that platform more.
Enjoy More Bookish Media
I finally owned up to myself in the past year or so that I don't really love watching movies, and that is still a true statement. I don't like going to movie theaters, and if I binge more than three episodes of television at a time, my eyes will roll up into my head and give my brain a long, hard stare about what the hell it thinks it's doing.
But you know what was one of my favorite movies I watched in the past year? Brooklyn. Not only was it lovely, and emotional, and a testament to the book, but it was something I set out to do with deliberate intention, of watching a great adaptation after I had finished the book. You know what else was great? The Netflix series of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Both were something so out of my normal daily living, that they made a real impression... and I want to keep going.
I've been putting off watching the Good Omens television series, because of how much I dislike watching TV by myself, even though I heard it's great. I've been meaning to re-watch the '90s Secret Garden movie since I planted my garden last Spring, but haven't made the time. My little brother will be reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time this coming year, and I really want to watch the 2005 Keira Knightley version with him before he leaves for college. Adaptations are just as worthy as the stories they're based on, and I want to spend more time enjoying them, too.
Find the Fun in Reading Again
I think the reason I took to Romance Novels so strongly last year, is because, on the whole, there is no reason for their existence simply beyond making sure their reader devotes a couple of hours out of their regular life and livelihood, to just sit down and enjoy themselves. There is no reason for Romance Novels - as a fluffy, lacy, frilly, guilty pleasure genre on the whole - to exist, beyond their uncanny, innate ability to make people really happy.
I always have fun reading them, but will put them off in favor of "less embarrassing" reading material. They rarely appear, if ever, on my Goodreads lists... but that's absolutely ridiculous. Maybe one of the reasons I've been struggling to hit my bookish stride, is because I'm doing things like this, that undercut my own ability to enjoy what I'm doing.
So, I'm searching for Fun, with a capital "F," in my reading this year. That doesn't mean I'm staying away for deep, meaningful, emotional material... it just means I'm leaving plenty of room for the happiness where I can. That means, reading new subjects in different places, enjoying them with tea, finding even more ways to share them with others, and feeling way less guilty about being pleased.
Write More, Especially for NaNo
NaNo 2019 was, as I mentioned, horrible. But it hasn't always been. There have been times when it has been freeing, to be selfish and take an hour to myself to write. It's been inspiring, leading me into new and grander daydreams with flights of fancy to grab hold to when walking around my daily life. NaNo has led to library research, Pinterest mood boards, recipe compilation, and a fair amount of too-long showers that run cold from how much I've been trying to puzzle a plot development out in my head.
The best thing I can do, I think, is write more. Find more time to carve out that place of exploration in my own head, and take charge of it for myself. And, of course, tackle NaNo again in the Fall, with a renewed confidence and a great plot line.
Keep Free of Self-Judgement, and Look for Happiness Instead
As someone who regularly has to contend with a lot of guilt, anxiety, fear, second-guessing, and self-destruction in her daily life - I'm Catholic, and the eldest of four siblings, and I am 26 and live at home with my parents and I spend a lot of time with my mom if that explains anything - it's really horrible that any of those negative emotions should end up leaking into the things I love, too. (You'd think that my ability to compartmentalize would come with more waterproof lining.)
So, I'll do my best to keep it out. Chances are, if I'm having trouble reading, then there's something else in my life out of whack; on the flip side, when my life balance starts leaning akimbo, there's nothing that balances me better than taking time to depressurize with a good book. I'll do my best to lean towards the happy. I'll open a blank doc and write something different; I'll walk to the library instead of driving; I'll take a break for a cup of tea, then come back and see if the world looks different, and try again. But I'll always be walking towards happy, if I can help it.
Again, I wasn't really intending for this post to get so personal, but what can I say? It's my first blog post in a while, and the first where I'm really trying to exercise that ability to be less guarded, and more honest with myself. Besides, if you've made it this far, chances are you're my Dad, my brother, or one of the few other trusted folks who've continued to read my blog through much worse than some moody self reflection.
Regardless of the reason as to why you're here, I'm happy you are. Thank you for listening, and I hope that you read some really great books this year.
What did your Year in Books look like in 2019? Have you set any reading intentions for 2020? Let me know, in the comments below!
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