While going to the gymnasium and focusing on physical health are common around this time of the year, I'd like to speak of an easy tip to resolve to take care of one's mental health: making time for reading in our busy lives. If reading more books in 2025 is one of your goals, here is some inspiration for you! As much as I would have liked to remember every book I read, I cherish the fact that somewhere in between, I lost track of how many and which ones I read — but here are the 52 I managed to recall and put down in a list. Much like how many of us forget the many series we watch on OTTs and struggle to remember! But this 'book forgetfulness' is a gift to myself; I wish more of it!
Of course, I sometimes pick a relatively easy and less bulky book to make up for the numbers, but every form of reading counts. Facts go to our brains, while stories go to our hearts. Many of us grew up listening to bedtime stories. Our parents and grandparents would read stories to us and tuck us into bed! However, the tradition of storytelling is slowly vanishing. Let's revive the best and oldest form of education. It is an excellent tool for passing cultures and traditions on to future generations.
Reading is a school that allows me to write better and improve at everything I do or aspire to do. You'll notice a few French books for kids on the list, for I am now attempting to read in a new language—and that's how you start!
Book List: 2024
Joan is okay: Weike Wang
Destination Coffee: Jane Ormond
The French Experience: Activity Book
Friends, lovers, and the big terrible thing: A memoir: Matthew Perry
Lessons in Chemistry: Bonnie Garmus
Uncanny Valley: Anna Wiener
Mrs Van Gogh: Caroline Cauchi (again, can read it multiple times!)
Burnt Sugar: Avni Doshi
The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss: Max Wirestone
To Paris With Love: Carl Weber & Eric Pete
One Paris Summer: Denise Grover Swank
Great or Nothing: Joy McCullough
My Perfect Life: Dyan Sheldon
The Basics: Poetry
Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen
Boy: Roald Dahl
L'ami vert cerf du prince de Motordu
Half of a Yellow Sun: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (Been picking this one every year but leaving it in between, it's too dark, and heavy!)
Nobody Asked For This: Charly Cox
Three Daughters of Eve: Elif Shafak
Burning Questions: Margaret Atwood
Desperate in Dubai: Ameera Al Hakawati
One More Day: Emma Heatherington
Room: Emma Donoghue
The French Perfumer: Amanda Hampson
Forty Rooms: Olga Grushin
Number One Chinese Restaurant: Lillian Li (struggled to finish!)
The Handmaid's Tale: Margaret Atwood
Hamnet: Maggie O'Farrell
La Belle au Bois Dormant
The Prophet: Kahlil Gibran
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: Satoshi Yagisawa
It Ends With Us: Colleen Hoover
My Year Of Rest And Relaxation: Ottessa Moshfegh
One Of Us Is Lying: Karen M McManus
The Happiness Project: Gretchen Rubin
The People We Hate At The Wedding: Grant Ginder
Roman Stories: Jhumpa Lahiri
Lotería: Mario Alberto Zambrano
Schadenfreude: Tiffany Watt
Big Magic: Elizabeth Gilbert (re-read, always a pick-me-up on low creative days!)
The Courage To Be Disliked: Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi
Only Love is Real: Brian Weiss
The Kindness of Strangers: Don George
Yes Please: Amy Poehler
Sex and The City: Candace Bushnell
The Power of Now: Eckhart Tolle
Teatime for the Firefly: Shona Patel
Confessions of a Taxi Driver: Eugene Salomon
Women Who Run With Wolves: Clarissa Pinkola Estés
#icouldhavebeenaninstapost: Purva Grover (read & re-read multiple times, as the book was released in April 2024)
Currently reading (trying to finish it this time) The Forty Rules of Love: Elif Shafak (for the book club's January 2025 read)
Also, here's what I read in 2023: Check it out.
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