I’ve been following someone else’s reading project that they did in 2020, and I can say, almost halfway through, that it’s been very manageable. Each play gets 5-6 days or so, but there is a buffer in between each work, and the person who created the calendar left off major holidays in 2020, so there is even more space built in. So I normally read 3-4 pages a day in my book of Shakespeare’s complete works, but if I read a little less, it’s OK. I take at least a day to read a plot summary in between each work so I know what I’m getting into. If it’s inconvenient to read my large Shakespeare book (e.g. I’m traveling) I read that chunk online.

I have not always loved it. Like any working artist who needed to get the next thing out there, Shakespeare was not nailing it every single time. (I do enjoy the commentaries that claim any of the not good stuff must not be Shakespeare…I recognize that he collaborated with people but still…can’t we imagine that sometimes he just needed to crank something out?). It’s also interesting to see, as I read through everything, how he re-used plot points and the known crowd-pleasing stuff.

But it’s also really cool to read the great works, and read some of the lesser-read works too. I just finished and actually enjoyed Pericles (incidentally, one of the works that people think Shakespeare didn’t completely write) and I probably never would have read it without my goal to read some Shakespeare every morning and to read through everything. So I’m glad I made this resolution. Now I just need to figure out what next year’s project will be! Any ideas?

So…onto the next read perhaps. I’ve been re-reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, though that’s on paper and I need something on my Kindle app to read in those little chunks of time, or when I’m sitting in the dark (putting the toddler to bed). I’d also like to find a novel since I prefer to have a mix going.

I never feel good about abandoning a book, or even putting aside a book for a while, especially when I know it’s a very good book. I just also know that if I’m not feeling like I want to read a book — and certain themes can do that to me — then I won’t be particularly motivated to pick it up. And if I’m not motivated to pick it up, I won’t make progress, and time has an opportunity cost. I could be using that time to read through something else that I’m in a better head space for.

If I live for 50 more years and read 50 books a year, that’s 2500 books. That is a small enough number as it is. I wouldn’t want that number to be even smaller because I tried to soldier through a book that I wasn’t feeling motivated to read.

Have you abandoned, or at least put aside, any books recently?

In other reading news: I’m currently reading Richard II (no, not Richard III – I already read that one) in my Shakespeare reading project. It’s not really one of Shakespeare’s most memorable, but I did find myself nodding in recognition to those lines I read this morning about “This happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea…” which culminates in Gaunt’s tribute to “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” I remember this well from some airline commercial decades ago. I don’t remember which airline, but it did make me want to fly to London!

Photo: We are always choosing how to spend our time. As the bracelet says, “Choose well.”

It is now December 27th, which is 361 days later. And sure enough, I am finished.

I suppose this seems straightforward enough, but any long journey can seem overwhelming. Not so much at the beginning. We all know the saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and yet you have lots of energy and enthusiasm for that first step. It’s the steps at miles 46, and 75, and 126, and so forth, that seem harder.

But when there is a plan, and the plan is straightforward, and you stick with the plan, then eventually you will finish. Reading one 3-4 page chapter per day was always doable. This pace allowed me to get to know and care about the characters in this sweeping saga of Russia during the Napoleonic wars. There is a reason War and Peace is considered one of the world’s best novels.

Now I will take a few days off, and then start my next reading project on January 1st! I’m looking at reading all the works of Shakespeare. The path isn’t quite as straightforward (Shakespeare didn’t divide his work into 361 bite-sized pieces…) but I have a calendar that involves reading about the same amount, roughly 3 pages in the collection per day.

So here’s hoping that in late December of next year I’ll be finished with that. Life is, in many ways, unknowable. But there’s a reasonable chance that 2022 will happen, and that 2022 will have 365 days, and that I will be around for them, and capable of reading a little bit here and there. Since those things are likely to happen, I could end the year not having read all the works of Shakespeare, or I could end the year having done so. I’d like to aim for the latter.

On the plus side, we got our family photos back from Yana and they turned out well! I’m posting some over on Instagram (@lvanderkam). As predicted, wrangling the children was stressful but also as predicted, I’m really happy to have the pictures. Now we need to make the Christmas card!

I started holiday shopping in earnest this week. Some children are easier to shop for than others. I am really struggling with what to get the 12-year-old. He has promised to think about it and help me out. I should note that he has about $60 in birthday gift card money that he has yet to spend. Contentment is good but this does make gift giving challenging! I welcome ideas on what anyone buys pre-teen boys.

Also in financial news: We set the 10-year-old up with a bank account. Our family policy is to get the kids an account at age 10 so they can start learning about saving and investing. This has been fun to watch. The 14-year-old bought Disney stock on the dip of the pandemic when the theme parks were closed. He was bullish on them coming back and has been rewarded for that bet. I should note that in general we are index-fund-oriented investors who don’t try to time the market, but that is a lot less interesting for kids starting out.

I’ve been pondering what to choose as my 2022 year-long read. I have really enjoyed reading through War and Peace at the pace of one chapter a day during 2021. Right now I’m having to restrain myself from just finishing the darn thing (only about 150 pages to go). After some thought, I’m pretty sure that I will spend 2022 reading through all the works of Shakespeare. I found a reading plan that assigns the plays and poems and sonnets to appropriate times of the year (we start with Twelfth Night, of course, for early January!) and I have a copy of the collected works, so I think that should work well. Humorously, the front of the book notes that it was “purchased at Stratford on Avon, England,” by my husband, during the summer of 1988, back when he was bumming around Europe as a student.

And speaking of books — though not quite so classic…the Kindle version of 168 Hours is on sale for $1.99 today over at Amazon. If you haven’t read my first time management book and were thinking about doing so, today would be a good day to get a copy!

Photo: I think of this as the album cover image. There are some with our faces over on Instagram (@lvanderkam). Photo credit Yana Shellman.