On my Goodreads account, I have two books on my “currently reading” shelf. Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham has been there since 2010, when I put it down and have yet to pick it back up. Volume II of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past has been there since I began reading it in 2017.
The last time I counted, I had more than 60 books in my TBR pile, including print copies of books and many eBooks. I’ve added I don’t know how many to the pile since then. It’s a LOT of unread books, and many of them are by some of my favorite writers, so it’s not THEM, it’s me. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I believe I was through 2019. In late 2019, I got this book:
Written by an educator and encompassing perspectives on racial justice, sociology, psychology, politics, and education, this was right up my alley and in early 2020, I began a slow read so I could take it all in.
Then the world went batshit crazy on so many levels, and suddenly I found myself unable to read. I’m not sure what I read in all of 2020. It seems like I just stopped. Then came 2021, and I managed to read five memoirs, one biography, and two romance eBooks, so things weren’t quite as bleak. (Unless three of those memoirs and the biography were in 2020. Those two all run together as one long year.)
I also began this book in late 2021:
It was a bit of a struggle getting through all the science up front, but I’m really glad I finally finished it THIS MONTH! It has enabled me to take some small steps toward feeling healthier mentally, physically, and emotionally. I also finished Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? THIS MONTH!
And yay, me, I didn’t stop at those two. In January, I’ve also read these:
So unless I read something else over the next couple of days, I am at finishing two nonfiction books in January 2022 and reading five novels.
In February, maybe I’ll finish a memoir and a biography I began in 2021, and then read more fiction from the TBR pile. Hopefully, I am getting my reading equilibrium back. (Making no promises about the Cunningham and Proust books, though.)
What were the memoirs you read?
Again, on some, I’m unsure what was in late 2020 or in 2021, and may have overlapped: Brian Wilson’s I Am Brian Wilson, Scott Wilson’s Son of a Beach Boy, Kenny Aronoff’s Sex, Drums, Rock & Roll, Richard Marx’s Stories to Tell, Mike Love’s Good Vibrations: My Life As a Beach Boy (I can barely tolerate him, and the book didn’t help), Hilarie Burton Morgan’s The Rural Diaries (the only one not related to music, as she’s an actress), and Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries.
The biography was Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman.
I’m not sure of the year with Michael Walker’s Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood. I hadn’t put it in my Goodreads library and my e-book doesn’t indicate when I read it.
A memoir I’m in the middle of reading is Pattie Boyd’s Wonderful Tonight and a biography I’m in the middle of reading is Alan Paul’s and Andy Aledort’s Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan, both music-related.
It’s pretty clear that when it comes to non-fiction, I go to music. This is not only because it’s been a major interest my entire life (I still know what my first album of children’s music was from before I could read or turn on a radio), but it’s research for when I write fiction. In fact, there have been a lot of fictional things I’ve written that I’ve altered or removed because I end up reading non-fiction that it’s too similar to. It’s very frustrating when what I’ve imagined/created is too close to someone’s real life. I write FICTION, not biography.
Yes, there’s definitely a theme there!
Interesting that you lean towards music in your non-fiction reading. I tend to lean towards history and natural history.
I used to read more history, and I have several in my TBR pile (as well as memoirs from political leaders). They tend to be longer and probably not as friendly for my pandemic reading attention span problem.