In August of 2020, a friend of mine suggested that I give a book, “A Gentleman in Moscow”, a read. The book, pretty popular at that moment, was already known by me from advertising, but I didn’t have the drive I needed to pick it up and start reading it. “We’ll read it at the same time”, she suggested.

I borrowed a copy of it from the library, cracked it open, and once I was in a few pages, I burned through the rest of that gem in a few days. And it is still the book that stands out for me as my favorite read in probably the last 5 years.

Fast forward to January, 2022, and I finally receive form the library my requested copy of that author’s latest book, “The Lincoln Highway”. Writer Amor Towles scores again with another novel that amply offers action and emotion and a decent revisit to the 1950’s. I found there was more darkness in this story than there was in Gentleman, but that is okay. And the book ended in a way that I didn’t expect it to, doused in a little bit of sadness- but Towles is just a great writer, and I am happy the latter book is different in mood and velocity than the former.

I did connect with The Lincoln Highway for a personal reason as well. Its early action begins out of Salina, Kansas, which is where my dad grew up as a kid, and it also develops in rural Nebraska, which is the state where my brother lives. The book references a fictional public theater in Salina which alludes to the real one my grandfather managed in that town for a period.

For me to complete that 578-page book in four days says something about the book.

This is because, despite my like of reading, I seem to have a problem getting through books every other year. It’s a curious thing- I go through periods where I just cannot read and digest a book for several months at a time.

This is recorded history, because, for the last seven years, I have participated in the annual Reading Challenge on goodreads.com. In the challenge, you record how many books you think you will read in a given year, and then as you read books, you mark them as read on the site. When the year is done, you have either completed or not completed your challenge.

Last year, I said I would read 25 books. I read 14.

I was feeling cocky in 2021, I guess, because of how well I did in COVID homebound year 2020, in which I read 31 of the 18 books I thought I would read. But 2020 was an anomaly for me.

In 2019, I read 16 of 20 books.

In 2018, I read 19 of 15. This was my other “banner year” in the Challenge, but come on- this is also where my expected number of reads was its lowest in this set of data.

In 2017, I read 10 of 20. (How did I, who thinks I read a fair amount, get through only 10 books that year? Oh yeah. That was the year I took half a year getting through Dune…)

In 2016, 16 of 25.

In 2015, 11 of 20.

And as you can see here, my annual expectation for reading isn’t crazy excessive. Over the seven years of the Reading Challenge I have records for, I anticipated I would read, on average, 20 books. And on average, I read about 17 books a year over those seven years.

This year in the Reading Challenge, I returned to a safe sober goal of completing 20 books.

My start with the Highway book was spectacular. But I don’t think I will read one book every 9 days throughout this year (which is reading too slowly for some of my friends who read 50-60 books a year in the Challenge). Still I would love to way overshoot my goal. By a lot.

I have a probable academic-type book in the queue on the history and culture of baseball in Japan. I do have quick-read Hillerman Leaphorn and Chee mysteries sitting on a shelf, there if my reading falters and I need a jump start by biting into something easy to read to get my concentration back on track. I also have some decently sized Stephen Ambrose books on my reading last that I will try to powe through pretty aggressively, as I am always interested in World War II history.

But still, reading a lot, regularly, is sometimes hard for me.

Towles has a third major book out that I haven’t read yet. I reckon I should get a copy of that one soon as well.

At least I know I have one other novel I would happily and undoubtedly polish off pretty quickly, if I needed to.