Even though goals and resolutions (or whatever word you choose to call your motivators of growth and change) can be reset at any time during the year, I particularly love planning my reading goals following the calendar year, with January 1 and December 31 as helpful bookends to contain and track my reading for a year.
At the end of 2011, I wrote a little bit about how I choose what books to read, and I still follow that matrix for the most part. I also like to leave a lot of blanks to be filled in over the course of the year. But choosing those first selection? Even if I don’t read them as the exact order of “first fourteen,” it’s pretty exciting for me.
14 Books I plan to Read in 2014.
1. A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Create (Emily Freeman)
2. One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhaustible World (Tullian Tchvidjian)
3. Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela)
4. Crazy Busy :A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem (Kevin DeYoung)
5. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock (Matthew Quick)
6. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anne Lamott)
7. The Pilgrim’s Regress (C.S. Lewis)
8. The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them
(Elaine Aron)
10. The Namesake: A Novel (Jhumpa Lahiri)
11. Better Late Than Early: A New Approach to Your Child’s Education (Raymond S. Moore, Dennis R. Moore, Dorothy N. Moore)
12. Salt: A World History (Mark Kurlansky)
13. Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City (Antero Pietila)
14. Raised by the Church: Growing up in New York City’s Catholic Orphanages (Edward Rohs, Judith Estrine)
5 Books I Plan to Reread
1. The King Jesus Gospel (Scot McKnight) (previous review here)
2. Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids (Kim John Payne) (previous review here)
3. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (Charles Duhigg) (previous review here)
4. The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun (Gretchen Rubin) (previous review here)
5. King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (Timothy Keller) (previous review here)
What’s on your list to read this year? Or other suggestions to add to my to-read list? I would absolutely love some suggestions for this year. (I have nearly 500 books on my to-read list, but based on my matrix for selecting what to read for a year, I definitely don’t follow a specific order for adding to or reading the books to my queue.)
My goal is to read 80 books in 2014, but I would like to try to push myself to read 100+ like I did in 2012. (I am pretty sure that for this season of life, around 100 books per year is my threshold for being able to successfully retain what I’ve read.)
Have you read anything by Malcolm Gladwell? I really like pretty much anything he writes. I would recommend his books.
I’d recommend The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. The audio book is very well done. I enjoy your reading lists and reviews! I’m trying to be more intentional in my reading this year and have been browsing your lists and requesting books at the library!
Thanks for the recommendation, Clarissa! Daniel read that a couple of years ago, and mentioned it as a good read. But I’d forgotten about it, so thank you!
Many of these I have read or am planning to read this year, and I also have a couple slotted to re-read. (Simplicity Parenting was one of my re-reads as well!)
Johanna, I was inspired to read a couple of these after reading your 2013 compiled book list. 🙂 I hadn’t heard of The Namesake prior to seeing it on your list!
Have you read any of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories? I do love The Namesake, but I also think Lahiri is a great short story writer, and her first collection (Interpreter of Maladies) won the Pulitzer. I just say that, so that in case you find the novel falls short of any high expectations, you might still consider giving her short stories a try.
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