I can’t believe I have read 81 books this year! I am pretty sure it is my year of reading the most books ever. 

Although I feel like I have slowed down in the past month or so, but, of course a year is all of 12 months. 

By the time this year is done, I should have a couple more under my belt with me finishing up the books I am currently reading and listening.

Listening to audiobooks in the gym five days a week definitely helped me get through a lot more books: Now I am reading a book, and listening to another book at the same time. They are both very different experiences, and I enjoy them both. More so with a good narrator.

Another secret to my big success this year is reading Shakespeare plays. Yes, in 12 months I read 11 plays and 1 long poem. The plays, although harder to read, are much shorter to read than a whole novel or a book of non-fiction. But I am so glad I set myself this reading challenge of reading a play a month. Having wanting to read Shakespeare for a couple of years now (since I bought my big fat Collected Works), I did not make time for it till I decided on this pattern. Having given myself this small dose of regular reading, and setting up a schedule, I was actually able to start and stick to it. And voila! I sure am looking forward to spending another year with William Shakespeare, one week a month…I do feel enriched having his company in my life 🙂

All that said, I started looking at my list to pick my favourites of the year, and wow, is that hard! Some titles I did not remember right away what those books were about. Needless to say they were not as exciting to me as the others that made me smile or breathe deeply when I stumbled on their names remembering the time and place that I read them in- they flavoured that little chunk of my life with their depth and beauty.

Books are such a great gift that we have invented for ourselves. I, for one, cannot imagine a good life for myself without them. And, I believe, this sentiment of mine is reflected in the size of my reading list for the year.

This feeling of flavoring my time with books deepens when I go away for a vacation with a book. That particular vacation is not just the time and place for me, but also the book that kept me company in that special time of my life, and made me see the world with the filter of the author’s story and words…

This week I plan to take some time to figure out my favourite reads of the year, and list them in a blog post next week. 

So, I will be back with more on this topic. And in the meantime, the reading life continues 🙂