Summing Up 2020

This has been a difficult year, to completely understate the obvious. At the same time, I also somehow feel like I can’t believe today is already the last day of 2020. I want to ask, where has all that time gone, and within that same time, what have I actually done and achieved?

I take a look at my Reading Goal at the beginning of the year, and I feel sort of shy to see how far I am from that initial goal. 52 books a year. That was my aim. One book a week. And I told myself that if at any time I feel overwhelmed, maybe I could go for shorter books, novellas, in between.

Then some time in July, I realised I was not going to make that goal in any way or form. So I cut it down to half. 26 books a year. That’s one book every two weeks. No matter how I looked at it, it felt completely doable. I am, after all, a fast reader. Surely I could read one book in two weeks.

And then today, I look at the list of books that I’ve read, and it is at 15. Not shameful, but that’s only slightly more than one book a month. Given all the time that we’ve had to spend indoors this year, one would have thought there would be more reading, not less.

But as the universe has constantly been showing us, who can truly say? Just because I am physically at home does not mean I’m in the right frame of mind to do meaningful reading. And if the act of reading is not meaningful, then why do it at all? In fact, this applies across the board. If we’re to do anything at all, it had best be meaningful.

So here’s where we take a closer look at the books I managed to read this year. I started the year on a high note, with the beautifully written novel by Tan Twan Eng. I had wanted to read it before watching the film they made, but after reading it, I no longer wanted to watch the film. The prose and descriptions in the book were so beautiful that I didn’t know how I would feel if the film couldn’t live up to it.

That book was followed by two Haruki Murakami books. He’s a favourite author of mine, and it’s been some time since I’ve last indulged in his wacky, quirky world. And while the worlds he create are still as bizarre as always, I have found it easier and easier to dive in and immerse myself completely. To suspend reality and believe every single word Murakami puts on the page. That’s the best way to read his books, I feel. Just let him take the lead.

There were a couple of books that didn’t quite hit the mark for me this year. Both Black Chalk and The Fire Gospel were not as good as I had wanted them to be. Meanwhile, the other books scattered throughout the year were either just right, or fell a little below expectations.

That doesn’t make for a bad reading year. I think what this year has given me in terms of books, is that I have read outside of my comfort zone. And it is precisely because of this that I’ve had some mishits, which comes with the territory of reading what I’m not used to.

There are also a couple of books that have been on my nightstand since the start of the year. Neil Gaiman’s The American Gods, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Both are huge books, heavy in content and prose. Both are brilliant, but my frame of mind has been kind of on and off, especially during the latter part of the year.

Moving into the new year, I’m really hoping to finish both books, and get started on some good ones as well. I don’t know what this year holds for me, or for us. But I’ll keep doing what I do. I’ll still plan to read as much as I can. But my focus will be less on how many books I read, but how meaningful my reading is. 52 books a year, one book a week, is not impossible. It is still the goal. The only difference now is that I know better than to be ashamed of not achieving what I set out to do. Because, after all, in this unpredictable world that we’re living in: Who can say?