Despite being rather quiet on here (sorry), I have been using Notion every day to help me with many tasks and projects. To prove it, I’ll be releasing some YouTube videos in the new year sharing some of my top uses for Notion (my daily log, library, bucket list, learning log, reflections, show & tell, quotations). Free templates too – so hang tight.
A question for you: If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self? What would you change? For me, I would say “read more!”.
I challenged myself in 2022 to read 24 books (2 per month). To some people that might not sound like much, but for me I thought it was a realistic target. I don’t have a long commute, I have young children, I’m not a night owl – believe me, I had all the excuses lined up. To reach my goal I knew I would have to create the time to read, make an effort to protect my reading time, or sneak it in whenever I could.
As the clock strikes midnight on 31 January 2022, I will have read 26 books this year (with a few others on the go that won’t be finished in time).
11 of those books were paperbacks, 15 were audiobooks. To be clear, audiobooks count. They very much count. I only started using them in the last couple of years and they have opened up my reading opportunities. I can now sneak in some reading while I’m doing the housework, walking to pick the kids up from school, or on a run. I keep notes on audiobooks the same way I do for physical books, writing reflections or quotations in Notion as I go.
Keeping my Notion pages updated and using the gallery view to filter out what I have read in any given year is both rewarding and motivating. I genuinely cannot wait to get started on my 2023 reads and maybe I’ll be able to read even more next year.
To me, it’s not about the numbers though. Yes, I was aiming for 24 (2 per month) but I don’t think a target number beyond that is really that useful. Some of the books I read were relatively short and easily digestible, for example Nigel, My Family and Other Dogs by Monty Don. Others were longer and more challenging, like Moby Dick Or, The Whale by Herman Melville. It’s not a race.
I tried to mix up my reading topics but I do tend to slip into reading about my interests. For me, I like to explore a bit of philosophy and I have been enjoying reading about stoicism and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I enjoy reading American literature and I enjoy nature writing. Many of the books I read combined these themes including; One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey by Dick Proenneke & Sam Keith, Think Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
I discovered some writers that in 2023 I will explore deeper and Cormac McCarthy was definitely a game-changer for me. The Road was one of the best books I’ve ever read. I will be re-reading it in 2023 and I have more McCarthy on the bookshelf to explore.
2022 and world politics were challenging to say the least. I read George Orwell’s 1984 this year and found it astonishing. I wish I had read it when I was younger and if you haven’t read it yet, now is as good a time as any to do so. There are so many classic novels that I was ashamed that despite knowing the general jist, or having seen a movie, I had not read the original book. That’s why I felt I needed to tackle Melville’s Moby Dick and in 2023 I will make sure I am mixing my reading list to include contemporary and classic literature.
My 2023 reading list will also continue to feature nature writing and two of my favourites from this year were the already mentioned, Think Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold and the fascinating and hopeful memoir Wilding by Isabella Tree that chronicles the Knepp Estate in the UK and their attempts to rebalance and rewild the countryside. I found it very convincing and hope to visit soon.
Anyway, the Notion system I use to record all my reading and catalogue all the books in my home and audio library will be shared shortly here on my website and also over on my YouTube channel.
So, here’s what I read in 2022:
1984, George Orwell
A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams, Michael Pollan
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, Steven Rinella
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Caffeine, Michael Pollan
Coyote America, Dan Flores
Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gywnne
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
Moby Dick or, The Whale, Herman Melville
Nigel: My family and other dogs, Monty Don
One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, Dick Proenneke & Sam Keith
Paddle Your Own Canoe, Nick Offerman
Rewild Yourself, Simon Barnes
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
The Madness of Grief, Richard Coles
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan
The Patient Paradox, Margaret McCartney
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Seven Ages of Death, Richard Shepherd
Think Like a Mountain, Aldo Leopold
Unnatural Causes, Richard Shepherd
Wilding, Isabella Tree
Wit: The Best Things Ever Said, John Train
Wishing you a happy reading journey for 2023.
Disclosure: If you buy books linked to my site, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.
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