In 2021, try to pull a reading muscle

On the last night of 2020 I made a declaration: I’m fixing myself a gin and tonic, I’m sitting on this chair, and I’m not moving until I’ve finished this book.

Two hours later I did it: I achieved my reading goal for the year.

I skipped off to tell Himself.

“You got to 50 books?” said he. “Well done!”

No, I grumped, actually I read 40 books in 2020, same as I did in 2019. Given the year that it was, aiming to equal my 2019 number felt like a win.

Until now.

“Well done anyway. It’s still impressive,” he said somewhat patronisingly, because he, damn him, had read 100 books in the year, or just shy of two a week. Again.

He’d also read some daunting tomes which I started and then failed at, for instance the third part in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series, The Mirror and the Light, all 882 pages of it, and declared it amazing.

It sits on my bedside table, bookmarked at page 267, a daily reminder of my failure. Amazing, he says; I call it hard.

Also, I can barely lift it.

And perhaps therein lies the problem – if reading “only” 40 books a year is even a problem – because reading is a muscle: use it or lose it.

Himself is an Olympian powerlifter.

Me, I’m competent, but not expert.

If this year your wish is to get back into reading again – proper reading, the kind of reading that requires focus and concentration, not skimming social media – or even just to start reading, then now is the time to set yourself a goal.

Six books this year? How does that sound?

One book?

The problem, I find, is that people who have fallen out of the reading habit – or never had it – decide if they’re going to tackle just one book then it should be serious and weighty, something off a list of 50 Books to Read Before You Die.

No. Unless you’re already a word weightlifter, Dickens/Tolstoy/Mantel will pull your reading muscles early.

Treat it like gym: start with something light, because no one can go from zero to Herculean. You’ve got to build yourself up slowly, making it sustainable.

Forty books? Pah! This year, I’m aiming to read… 41.

Jennie Ridyard.

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