The year I got my reading mojo back
I’ve always loved reading. But somewhere between baby one and baby two and the sheer mental energy it takes to juggle kids, partner, work, admin, friends etc. my reading mojo got well and truly lost. I got sucked into easy, snackable pulp fiction that I’d skim through on my Kindle in ten exhausted minutes before I went to bed. And that kind of book is fine, fun and easy even, but it started to just not fill me up. I didn’t get any real satisfaction from them. I would read them, and then forget them.
Towards the end of 2018, I finally started feeling like I was getting into a groove with life again. I was back at work, we had a new routine as a family and gradually I was clawing back some minutes for myself. I started to miss proper reading, with physical books. So I asked my husband for books for Christmas, and to give him a helping a hand, I circled a bunch in The Guardian review of books that I liked the look of.
I was also inspired by my friend Steph, who was working on recovering her own reading mojo and has a great Instagram page about kid and adult books.
So this is a list of all the books I read (plus one or two I’m still reading) last year. Just to remind myself how good it felt to get back to something I love and how worthwhile it is setting a goal and working towards it. Looking forward to seeing what the list looks like at the end of 2020. Send me your recos!
- The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
- Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
- Alpha Girls by Julian Guthrie
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
- Little Big Lies by Liane Moriarty
- Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney
- Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez (in progress)
- This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
- Circe by Madeline Miller
- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
- The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
- The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy
- Don’t Hold My Head Down by Lucy-Anne Holmes
- The Good Liar by Nicholas Searle
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (in progress)
- Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
- The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
- Milkman by Anna Burns (I tried to read this but found it so hard to get into. Might give it another go.)
