At least one of us at the Book Review is rolling over a previous year’s resolution.
Is this the year I finally finish “Ducks, Newburyport”?! — MJ Franklin, preview editor
When setting realistic goals, it helps to know yourself (and your blind spots).
My major goal for 2023 is to admit to myself that I’m never going to finish “Finnegans Wake” and that’s OK. But it’s OK if I do, too!
Beyond that, I want to get over my sci-fi block: this is the year I am going to read the books that people tell me will change my mind and my life — Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia E. Butler, Thea Lim — and I believe they will.
And I want to read to my son his first “Moomintroll.” — Sadie Stein, preview editor
Rather than go deep, some of us are casting a wide net with our choices.
In 2017, I bought a signed copy of Louise Erdrich’s “The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse” at Birchbark Books when I was in Minneapolis. After starting the book and losing it in a pile — and then in moving boxes — I vow to finish it by the end of Q1 2023. In the meantime, I’m reading through a stack of those handy Oxford University Press “A Very Short Introduction” books on various subjects; this week’s volume is about the U.S. Congress, partly for context with the House Speaker drama and partly because I fear most of my basic knowledge about the workings of the legislative branch comes from Schoolhouse Rock! and a vague government class taught by a indifferent high-school football coach back in rural Indiana. I’m also reading the annual “World Almanac and Book of Facts,” which my dad used to do every year — buy a copy in January and read the thing cover to cover in small bits over the next several months. (Yes, he was an unstoppable “Jeopardy!” machine.) — J.D. Biersdorfer, production editor
Several of us plan to spend the year with the classics.
Usually, my goals when it comes to reading are just to do more of it: more books, more quickly, more often. I can be a picky reader — “discerning,” let’s call it — but that’s no hurdle, since the supply of interesting literature I haven’t gotten around to is pretty much endless. “Anna Karenina”? Loved it. “War and Peace”? Never picked it up.
My job ensures that I read plenty of new titles, so I like to dedicate my leisure reading to older works, whether they’re classics or simply books that passed me by the first time around. Last year that meant I finally tackled Roberto Bolaño’s “2666”; this year “My Ántonia” and “Pnin” are both near the top of my list for no particular reason except that they’re on the shelf, beckoning. — Gregory Cowles, senior editor
Before the pandemic, I used to walk over to my local library every other Sunday and spend an hour or so in the dustiest reaches of the stacks, where I’d choose a book I had never read — and often never heard of! I’d spend two luxurious weeks with whatever book I checked out, always an older title, and lingered on every page. It was such a great antidote to the way I usually read, and I want to start doing it again. — Tina Jordan, deputy editor
Some of us hope reading will become a family affair.
When my 14-year-old daughter put a novel by Simone de Beauvoir (one I’d never heard of) on her Christmas list, I took it as a momentous sign: Clearly we were now ready as a family to pick books we could read and enjoy together, adults and children alike — a book club for the four of us. (Alas, we do not seem to have reached this point yet with respect to movies.) First up for us is Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” — an admittedly dark choice (though arguably in keeping with our war-filled news). We’ve talked about watching the new German film adaptation afterward, but we may find we don’t have the stomachs for more than one tour through the carnage of World War I. For our next pick, we are thinking something a little lighter — a groundswell is building for “Wuthering Heights.” — Emily Eakin, preview editor
Others are less sanguine.
Since 2019, I’ve read at least two books recreationally per month as wholly unscientific evidence that I remain a master over my phone. Since I’ve never been a practiced re-reader, I’d like to start incorporating titles I’ve already read into my monthly routine.
I have declared to my family that I will begin this month with Luis Buñuel’s autobiography (which I last read in 2017). This announcement was greeted with, “Great,” and two disengaged nods. — Matt Dorfman, art director
And some goals aren’t strictly about books at all.
My goals are reading-adjacent: to get a new contact lens prescription so I don’t have to jack up the font to 18 on my iPad; to stop being a conscientious objector in my book club; to start responding to texts from friends looking for reading recommendations three minutes before they board a flight to somewhere I’ve never been; to donate at least 11 of the 19 boxes of picture books in my garage to my goddaughter; to establish a Free Little Library and never allow it to house squirrels or discarded coffee cups; and to admit, once and for all, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’m never, ever, no matter how many hours I devote to it and how many pangrams I borrow from my sister, going to be queen in Spelling Bee. — Elisabeth Egan, preview editor
