I lost the habit of reading in the past years. A busy life, and having theinternet at hand everywhere including in bed would do that. One would pick the easiest and less engaging solution. As a 2022 New Year Resolution, my wife and I each made a reading list of 20 books based on shared categories (e.g. 1 book with an author starting with an 'S', 1 with time travel, etc.), with the goal to spend more time reading.
In 2022, I have read 7 books out of that 20 list. This is more books in a year that I have read in a long time, so I'm pretty happy with that experiment!
The only small mistake I have made is to not check the length of the books before selecting them. So I have a bunch of them that are 500+ pages, which obviously takes longer to read than smaller ones. And... they're not always twice as interesting!
I also noticed that I read waaay faster in French than in English. So it took me forever to finish The Grapes of Wrath (600 pages), while any smaller French book felt like it was a matter of a week. It makes a big difference in my opinion of a book, because I don't want to spend weeks or months on a book I'm not enjoying.
I love making lists, so obviously, the first part was really fun: come up with a list of cool categories, and then try to find books matching them.
Here is the category list that we came up with:
Here is the actual book list. Note that some are in French and some are in English. I only read the first 7 ones yet.
Author: Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Category: From year of birth
Author: John Steinbeck
Category: Title with a fruit or vegetable
./2023-01-01-grapes-of-wrath.gmi
Author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
English Title: We
Category: Author name starting a Z
Author: Hervé Le Tellier
English Title: The Anomaly
Category: Book winner of the Goncourt award
Author: Connie Willis
Category: With time travel
./2023-01-02-to-say-nothing-of-the-dog.gmi
Author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
English Title: Journey to the End of the Night
Category: Dead author
./2023-01-02-voyage-au-bout-de-la-nuit.gmi
Author: Philip K. Dick
Category: With a movie adaptation
./2023-01-02-do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep.gmi
From there, the remaining for the list will be added to next year's list that is soon to come.
Author: Kristin Hannah
Category: Author has the same (first)name as someone in the family
Author: Benjamin Franklin
Category: Memoirs
Author: Xavier Hanotte
Category: Historical fiction
Author: Joe Hill
Category: Title linked to work "fire"
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Category: Narrator without a name
Author: Michael Pollen
Category: Non fiction (with theme chosen by spouse)
Author: Markus Zusak
Category: Contain adoption
Author: Emmanuel Jal
Category: Take place in a country starting by S
Author: Mary Ann Shaffer
Category: Epistolary novel
Author: Stephen King
Category: Character with a cat
Author: Tara Westover
Category: Coming of Age
Author: Stephen King
Category: Published in 2022
Author:
Category: Bonus: Free choice