I have made a conscious effort since I was a pre-teen to build my life around daily habits and disciplines of the mind, body, and spirit and to work toward specific goals. I don’t make new year’s resolutions, per se, but I do use the monthly, quarterly, and yearly calendar as opportunities to evaluate my routines and plans and make adjustments where appropriate. For several years this has included planning and organizing my reading each year. While I have general targets each year for how much I read, the focus is on what and how I read.
Most years I read well over 100 complete books. This is only a percentage of my total reading since on any given week I may read a few hundred pages of essays, journal articles, and excerpts from commentaries and other books that I do not read entirely. I have found it difficult to log reading minutes or pages since I am constantly reading throughout the day. I listen to audiobooks when I drive and run, I read a Kindle in bed until I fall asleep, and I keep a book with me throughout the day so that I can grab a few pages here and there between other activities. I only log complete books, not ones I only read part of or skim. This is admittedly arbitrary since some articles and essays I read each year are longer than some of the books recorded. The shortest book on my log may only be 90-100 pages. The longest will be over 1,000. Of course, page size, font size, and formatting also makes a difference. I tweak the rules for my log from year to year, but I have found a simple list of the complete books I read serves me best. No one ever sees it except me, and if the rules are admittedly arbitrary, I find it helpful and encouraging. It reminds me of what I’ve read, learned, and enjoyed each year and helps me plan and improve in the future.
I have used categories to organize my reading for some time, but in 2021 I plan to be even more aggressive with my targeted reading. I plan to read 90 books in 10 specific categories with the remaining 10+ books being free electives. The plan is to read 12 works of theology, philosophy, history, and classics, one from each category every month for a total of 48 in the year; 8 works on current events; 4 on ministry, 4 biographies, 4 related to personal development (including linguistics), and 4 foreign language titles; and at least 18 of those I re-read every year or two.
This may be overly ambitious. I have never attempted to assign this much of my total yearly reading. But if I do not reach my goal, I have no doubt the plan and attempt will help me focus and accomplish more than I might have otherwise. I am not reading to complete a challenge but because I love reading and because I want to learn, grow, and enjoy the life God has given me.
“Life is, to be sure, more than reading, but it is still not complete without our being ready to lose ourselves in a book that delights us….
“Not a day passes in which we did not learn something we might have learned. There is nothing necessarily tragic about this, unless we think we are gods. Yet, we would be a little inhuman were it not unsettling to realize that we might easily have learned something but did not take the opportunity to do so.”
--James Schall, The Life of the Mind, 110
