Today on the first day of the new year I came across the above photo of a young lady in front of all the books she read in 2021.
The new year 2022 has arrived, and the stage is set for her, me, and you to journey through the next twelve months of literary adventures. How wonderful is that moment when you open a book to page one and start a narrative journey with the author! What interesting characters and involving scenarios will a person encounter by the end? The only thing really new in the world are all the books you have not read yet. It is like a new world yet to be discovered.
All the great novels you can read in the new year. All you can learn by stretching your mind to learn from literature. All the lessons large and small they can teach. All the fun to be had in their reading.
The thought that comes to mind in looking at that photo of the woman in front of the stack of books she read in 2021 is how rare it is to find a real reader. “Reading is boring!” is the most familiar refrain. Or people tell me they learned to dislike reading when schools forced them to do it. Or reading books gets crowded out by electronic distractions. Or it requires too much effort and makes their head hurt. Most Americans, especially younger people, invest their time in staring at various types of screens instead — they find themselves idle, and they reach for their smartphone or video game console to drive away the boredom:
I think about all this, and I wonder if I am just an older person out of touch with the younger generation.
But no, I conclude, it was essentially no different fifteen or thirty years ago. Readers are a sort of select aristocracy both yesterday and today, and it will be no different tomorrow. The real readers are few in number. But we recognize each other when we meet one another, as I did in looking at that photo.
I have some twenty years of my resolutions for the new year, as well as all the books and movies consumed during that year. It is an intellectual biography of sorts for the 12 month period. Those lists show where my mind dwelled during that calendar year. I read some forty books each year, although I read over sixty during the quarantine year of 2020. But you can see for yourself —
Rich Geib’s New Year’s Resolutions
So what should I read this year of 2022?
Sometimes one of my daughters will ask me what is my favorite book, movie, or piece of music. It is such an overwhelming question. I have dozens of “favorites” for each medium, depending on specific circumstances. In fact, I reject the idea of one “favorite” book, for the same reason as I reject the idea of one single “best friend.” It is not a competition with only one winner. There are many “favorites.”
But I digress.
Books are such idiosyncratic creatures. They are at least as unique and particular as their authors, at least the best ones are. It is perilous to recommend books, as tastes and preferences are so subjective.
That being said, dear reader, do you have any recommendations for 2022?
And good luck everyone in the new year! It’s gonna be a great year.
“I’ve always thought that a good book should be either the entry point inward, to learn about yourself, or a door outward, to open you up to new worlds.”
Taylor Jenkins Reid
“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”
Anna Quindlen
“Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it.”
Alan Bennett
“Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education.”
Donalyn Miller
“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.”
Henry David Thoreau
