I Read 100 Books in a Year

If you’ve spent much time with me this year, you know I have been working on a pretty intense personal challenge. This week, I reached my goal: I read 100 books in a year.

Last September, my friend Tabatha texted me. She had seen a blog post from a mutual acquaintance who had just finished up a yearlong challenge of reading 100 books. Tabatha and I have always both shared a love for reading, passing on recommendations and borrowing books from one another in college. She suggested we attempt a reading challenge of our own; without hesitation, I began my quest to read 100 books in a year.

I have always loved to read, but it is a habit I have fallen in and out of over the years as life has changed and my time has been monopolized in other ways. As a kid, I had a weird affinity for the Laura Ingles Wilder books, that eventually grew into a more normal love for Harry Potter, Twilight, and any other similarly daunting series. In high school, I read every book for English class, meticulously annotating the pages, not because it was homework but because I genuinely enjoyed reading them. In college, with all the reading that came with my classes, reading for fun became less of a habit and more of a recreational activity saved for vacations and holidays. In the day to day I would add books I came across to a to-read list. This was a list that grew tenfold in the time it took me to get around to checking one off of it.

When I moved to Thailand in 2017, I found myself with a lot of time to do the introverted things that, in college, I had nearly forgotten I enjoyed: reading for fun, writing for fun, and learning for fun. Over there, I had more alone time and found myself tuning into podcasts, rather than throwing on music, to fill the silence. I liked the ability to stay up to date with the daily news (favorite podcasts: Today, Explained and The Daily), the economy (favorite podcast: Marketplace), the occasional politics (favorite podcast: The Weeds), or to learn something new about people or policy (favorite podcasts: Hidden Brain, The Impact, and The Uncertain Hour), all while commuting to work, working out, cleaning my apartment, or doing just about any otherwise mindless activity. I was spending my time learning new things, writing and exploring my thoughts, and reading the limited English books that I could get my hands on. I was pouring though books faster than I could find them.

Cue Joey getting me the one of best gifts I have ever received, and what is now one of my essentials for traveling: my Kindle. Given the choice, I agree with the sentiment of preferring traditional books to an e-reader; however, the convenience of a Kindle when living abroad cannot be overstated.

Changing Habits

So fast forward to August 2018: I am back in Portland, I am trying to maintain some of the mindful habits I developed in Thailand while balancing my Portland lifestyle, and I get that text from Tabatha. This seems like the perfect goal! Ambitious? Definitely. But in-line with my other values and goals? For sure. But I quickly realized I would need to change some things about my lifestyle in order to make the time to read more.

The biggest change I have made this past year involves my social media habits. I aspired to replace the endless scrolling on Instagram with reading; I started always having a book with me. 10 minutes before work starts? That’s enough time to read a few pages. Eating dinner alone? It’s way less uncomfortable with a book.

I also got an Audible subscription. It’s funny, because when I would tell people that I was challenging myself to read 100 books in a year they would be impressed; when I would tell people that I was including audiobooks in this challenge they would scoff, “What? That’s cheating!” What?! This is my challenge that I’m doing for myself! I make the rules! Also, how many books have you read this year? I had never been into audiobooks before, but, as a podcast listener, listening to books was an easy transition. I replaced my habit of messing around on my phone before bed with listening to a chapter of my current audiobook.1

Similarly, for the most part I stopped watching TV. Specifically, I stopped binge-watching Netflix shows alone. I still watch movies or shows with friends or family, but I quit it as a solitary time-suck. In addition to the time it freed up, doing so also had the benefit of broadening the scope of books that I was interested in. I would get bored if I stuck to just one or two genres so instead I added a variety and started focusing on including books that I could learn something from.

With more time freed from screens, I was easily finishing a book or two a week. I have talked to many people who have told me they would love to do something like this challenge, but they simply do not have the time for it. While I believe this may very well be true for some people, I think the majority of us don’t realize how much time we waste. While I have spent a little less than half of this challenge in Korea where, admittedly, I have a lot of time, I read 62/100 books before I started teaching here. I made time; I prioritized reading. And while 100 books may not be a feasible goal for everyone, I am confident that anyone who wants to read more (or accomplish another equally as self-fulling goal) can make time by using a book to replace a screen or other time-sucking habit that isn’t serving them.

Game-Changer: The Library

In addition to time, another limiting obstacle to reading so many books is money. When I started the challenge, I picked books that had been on my “to read” list for a while. However, even buying them used, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this challenge was going to cause me to go broke. And then one day I remembered something else that I had loved as a child, back in those Little House on the Prairie days: the library.

That day I left my apartment, walked approximately 4 minutes down the street and around the corner, and I got myself a library card. And just like that—BOOM—my life changed forever. I say this only slightly hyperbolicly. It sounds dumb—like, of course the library!—but it was a resource I hadn’t taken advantage of in my adult life. And let me tell you, the Multnomah County Library has upped its game from when I was a kid! It has an app! I can manage all of my holds online! And remember how convenient my Kindle was for traveling? I discovered that I could check out e-books. Even in Korea, I continue checking out e-books on my Kindle. Game. Changer.

The List

I debated including a list of the books I read or not. On the one hand, I did this challenge for myself. I chose books on subjects and in genres that interested me, not to prove my intelligence or sophistication (or lack thereof). I took this yearlong goal as an opportunity to read books that have been on my “to-read” list for months or years. Additionally, as I started traveling again, I found it really interesting to pick up books that were set in and/or were written by authors from the country I was traveling in. These might not be of interest to everyone.

Ultimately though, as someone who takes book recommendations from friends seriously and browses book lists on Pinterest in her free time, I figured including my list might be helpful to any of you who are trying to read more. If you have questions or want my opinion about any of the books, feel free to shoot me a message or follow me on Goodreads.This was a really fun project for me. I truly hope it inspires you, as I was inspired a year ago, to read more; additionally, I hope it inspires you to change a habit or to get started on a goal you keep putting off. January is not the only time for resolutions. You can start right now.

Here is the list: