The Reading Year 2021

2020 was a year. I got married. My wife and I found out we are having a baby. I suffered throughout from chronic depression. The world was locked down. At some point, I might have breathed.

Perhaps it's unsurprising, then, that I read more than normal. Time was one commodity that did exist in the first half of the year, moreso than in other years. In total, I completed 100 books, many of which were towards my personal target of reading more books either by people of colour, or about different cultures around the world. If you can't go out and experience the wider world, the least you can do is understand the experiences of others.

2021 is starting with something similar: A Corner of a Foreign Field is a book on cricket in India. But that isn't all: it's a book about Indian social and political history since about 1850. It's another book to help me understand another culture - or, I should probably be honest about this, about the many different cultures of India. Let's remember, the modern nation of India is a product of a colonial past, far more than it would have been if let to its own devices.

India promises to feature heavily in this year's reading. For Christmas, my wife bought me William Dalrymple's The Anarchy, a history of the East India Company and its corporate colonisation of the subcontinent. I also intend to read Michael Wood's The Story of India. A few new ideas will keep me going.

But other than that, do I intend to set targets? Not really. Setting myself targets, partly for my own self-improvement, probably puts me under more pressure than I strictly speaking need to put on myself. My only target is this:

ENJOY WHAT I READ.

This means a return to science fiction. This means completing those series which have been sat on the Kindle for months, or (in some cases) years (perhaps that means the Joe Abercrombie sitting in the background). It means reading Ann Leckie, Adrian Tchaikovsky, RJ Barker. It means returning to old faithfuls after years away. It means Foundation and The Farseer Trilogy. It means revisiting the Norman Conquest and spending time in Anglo-Saxon England.

Life is too short to read things I don't enjoy. May 2021 bring enjoyment.