Next year, I’ve decided I’m going to ditch the GoodReads challenge, stop obsessively compiling a to-be-read list and just pick up and read whatever catches my fancily, on the go. Organically. The hyper-curation has made my to-be-read list so long and unwieldy, it’s almost intimidating. And I’ve missed out on reading things as and when they’ve cropped up and struck a chord. By the time I get to said book in the list, the moment of inspiration has passed and the impact is lost.

Things that didn’t go to plan this year: finishing 40 books, finishing every book I started (I abandoned and/or didn’t read continuously about 5 books this year — including the one in this picture) reading on holiday (I read nothing in Europe and nothing this time around in Goa). Things that did: read more fiction. Which further tells me to let go of the plan, in general. And flow with the flow.

That’s my plan what I’m looking for next year. But for now, here’s a list of all the books I read this year. A list like I did last year and the year before last. I’m aware this is still a reflection of an obsession for completion making me do this, but I also do this for myself and for anyone else who might want to pick a book up from something they’ve stumbled on somewhere in this blog, but it’s impossible to find at a late date.

Here goes.

1. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson
2. I’ll Give You The Sun, Jandy Nelson
3. Ravan and Eddie, Kiran Nagarkar
4. Eleanor Oliphant is Absolutely Fine, Gail Honeyman
5. The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
6. Us, David Nicholls
7. The Rules Do Not Apply, Ariel Levy
8. Eleanor & Park, Rainbow Rowell
9. The Desire Map, Danielle LaPorte
10. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
11. Reasons To Stay Alive, Matt Haig
12. Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
13. Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro
14. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
15. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Roxane Gay
16. What I Know For Sure, Oprah Winfrey
17. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
18. Standard Deviation, Katherine Heiny
19. The Language of Baklava, Diana Abu Jaber
20. Ballad for a Mad Girl, Vikki Wakefield
21. Landline, Rainbow Rowell
22. All the Good Parts, Loretta Nyhan
23. Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home, Jessica Fechtor
24. Not That Kind Of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned”, Lena Dunham
25. Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
26. Barbara the Slut and Other People, Lauren Holmes
27. The Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, Tishani Doshi
28. French Milk, Lucy Kinsley
29. The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
30. All the Bright Places, Jennifer Niven
31. Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books, Cara Nicoletti
32. Cyber Sexy: Rethinking Pornography, Richa Kaul Padte
33. A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
34. Born a Crime, Trevor Noah
35. Gachar Gochar, Vivek Shanbhag (Translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur)
36. Normal People, Sally Rooney
37. 60 Indian Poets, Jeet Thayil
38. Sultana’s Dream, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

All the books: 2016
All the books: 2017

Two years ago: Day 364: Redemption reading