I’ve always read because I love it, but also because I write. I know I may upset some traditional readers, but paperbacks are not convenient for me. Yes, I miss the smell of paper, but it cannot compensate for the many downsides of reading a paperback. Plus, reading on Kindle has the added benefit of the reading insights it provides.
In the last (almost) two years, I’ve read 45 books. This is an average of one book every 16 days. The total number of pages was 10,852, with an average book length of 233 in 2021, and 253 in 2022.
The longest book in 2022 was 433 pages. To be honest, I avoid longer books, despite having written one myself. Especially with non-fiction, I’ve found that books beyond ~280 pages can become repetitive, while many literary classics can be very short. Out of the smallest books I read in these two years, two were Hemingway, one Stephen King, and one John le Carré.
27 books were non-fiction, 14 fiction, and four literary fiction; three were in Greek and 42 in English; 11 were audiobooks, but as I usually read two books at a time, one of them was always on Kindle.
As you can see, I do not read every single day, but I read most days of the week. The fact I can start reading on my Kindle device, and then continue on my Kindle mobile app makes the reading experience much easier. Therefore, I can read whenever and wherever I want: in waiting rooms, in airplanes, in a queue, before I sleep, in idle time between activities, and… yes, in the toilet, too. As Margaret Atwood wrote:
The bathroom is a place where you can go in and pretend to be doing one thing while actually you’re reading. Nobody can interrupt you.
“Margaret Atwood: What I Read”
The moment I rate a book on Kindle, Goodreads adds it to my Read shelf and ticks it off my Reading Challenge list. My goal for 2021 was 24 books, but I missed it by three books. My 2022 goal was 16 books, and I exceeded it by seven, despite it being the year I became a dad. In both years, December was my busiest month, thanks to the holiday mood and the time off work.
I read the day I proposed to my wife, Dora, during our wedding week, and even at the maternity clinic when Dora and our newborn baby were sleeping. Reading is not a way to escape reality, as I used to think. It is a way to learn, to explore new things, to re-consider my perspective. Reading is like silently talking with an author, and I know a book is good when I have no more questions at the end to ask.
Here’s what stood out for me (and not) in these two years.
Best book of 2021
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Best book of 2022
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Books that made me a better person
Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, Matthieu Ricard
Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Martin E.P. Seligman
Atomic Habits, James Clear
Books that made me want to travel (and Buy a Motorcycle)
Long Way Down, Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
(and waiting for Long Way Up this year)
Here’s the full list:
2023
No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism, Chris Niebauer
2022
- In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway
- Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, Matthieu Ricard
- No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners, by Noah Rasheta
- The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
- The Art of Meditation, Matthieu Ricard
- One Page Talent Management, Marc Effron
- The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Philippa Perry
- Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules, Jeremy Miller
- The Most Important Thing, Howard Marks
- Long Way Down, Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
- Long Way Round, Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
- Critical: Science and Stories from the Brink of Human Life, Matt Morgan
- The Art of X-Ray Reading, Roy Peter Clark
- Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To, David A. Sinclair
- The Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
- Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, Roy Peter Clark
- The Lost Art of Running, Shane Benzie
- Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor
- Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ, Giulia Enders
- The Mental Toughness Handbook, Damon Zahariades
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport
- A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
2021
- Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
- Little Anecdotes about the Greek Revolution, Pavlos Koutouzis
- No More Mr. Nice Guy: The Hero’s Journey, Michael Pariser
- Other Women Wear Your Dresses, Lakis Lazopoulos
- The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
- How Iceland Changed the World: The Big History of a Small Island, Egill Bjarnason
- Decluttering at the Speed of Life, Dana K. White
- The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language, Mark Forsyth
- As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
- Show, Don’t Tell, Sandra Gerth
- A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
- Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics, Tim Marshall
- Atomic Habits, James Clear
- The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
- Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
- Small Change: Money Mishaps and How to Avoid Them, Dan Ariely & Jeff Kreisler
- Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
- Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King
- Call for the Dead, John le Carré
- Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Martin E.P. Seligman
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories, Ernest Hemingway
