There are book challenges that I have joined on Goodreads, but it’s not working for me, so in 2023, I did not enter any. I read whatever interested me and enjoyed them rather than attempting to reach a certain number of books and rushing to meet the quantity of books for my challenge. I want to enjoy every book I read, which I did except one – The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata by Gina Apostol. This particular book has lengthy footnotes on every page that distract the flow of the story. Some pages have one sentence or a short paragraph; the rest are all footnotes in small print. I could not get the hang of it. I read it early on and quit. Then I started again, and I’m now on p. 120 out of 342 pages, and I gave up again. I don’t know if I want to continue. I never gave up on any book, but with this one, I had it. If I could read War and Peace, all 1461 pages, I could deal with any book, but I could not stand those lengthy footnotes in this book. And the storyline is not at all interesting.

One factor of my book challenge this year is that I joined a book club, so I must read the book club choices, which often are not books I will choose to read. I like historical fiction and WWII books about the Pacific Theater. I’m starting to catch up on classics, so I read War and Peace this year.

Since 2010, I’ve been keeping track of how many books I read. I am not a fast reader and spend my days doing all sorts of projects, too. I write most of the time, and when I take a break, I either work in the garden or read. Besides, I also do some voluntary work and walk my son’s dog while my son is at work. So, my days are full of fun activities that I enjoy.

Looking at the chart, I realized I did more reading after my husband was diagnosed with Late Stage Kidney Disease in 2015, and I quit my volunteer work one by one. As his illness progressed and he needed more care, my reading slowly dropped, starting in 2018 when I had to give him two peritoneal dialyzes a day. After he passed away in 2020, I was so stricken with grief that I could not do much reading. Then, with the help of some friends, I went back to writing and devoted much of my time to writing late in 2020 and the whole of 2021.

Here are my statistics:

Below are the titles of the 18 books, their authors, and the number of pages I have read in 2023. I probably could have read more, except I read War and Peace, the longest book I have ever read. It’s a big accomplishment for me to do that. It took me 80 days to finish the book. I read between 16-20 pages daily, depending on how much my eyes could handle. They are small print, too, and it was hard on my eyes, but I persevered. It was an excellent book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Name of the Book	Author/Editor	Number of Pages
Barely Legal	Stuart Woods	368
A History of Wild Places	Shea Ernshaw	354
Demon Copperhead	Barbara Kingsolver	560
The Ghost Bride	Yangsze Choo	368
The Quest	Nelson DeMille	458
Linderhof Palace: Official Guide	Gerhard Hojer	62
The Greek Myths: Stories of the Greek Gods and Heroes Vividly Retold	Robin Waterfield	320
Running with the Giants: What the Old Testament Heroes Want You to Know About Life and Leadership	John C. Maxwell	160
Lessons in Chemistry	Bonnie Garmus	390
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women	Lisa See	368
Winning is a Habit: Vince Lombardi on Winning, Success, and the Pursuit of Excellence	Vince Lombardi, Gary George	160
War and Peace – Inner Sanctum Edition	Leo Tolstoy	1461
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine	Gail Honeyman	325
The Zigzag Road: A World War II Story of Love, Faith, Courage and Survival	Rosalinda Rosales Morgan	316
Someone Else’s Shoes	Jojo Moyes	438
Treasury of Christmas Stories	Ann McGovern (Editor), David Lockhart (Illustrator)	151
A Christmas Carol	Trina Schart Hyman	118
The Vintage Caper	Peter Mayle	229

My goal in 2024 is to read 15 books, which is doable in spite of what I have in store for me next year. I still want to read Story of Civilization by Will Durant, an 11-volume series of lengthy tome. That would be a monumental task! My husband did it with a goal of one book a year. He usually read three books simultaneously. I have so many books on my shelf that I want to read, and I will pick up some for this year’s reading. I want to revisit Shogun so that it will be my first choice for 2024.

I have a big writing project that I’m working on, and my schedule will be pretty tight. Of course, I’m also refiguring out my garden, which is time-consuming. I edit two newsletters every quarter, so my time is packed with things to do.

So there we go. I’ll continue writing and reading and then stop and smell the roses!