Building my Reading Stack for 2024

Excited for the reading year ahead!

I always joke that my "To Be Read ( TBR) " stack will outlive me. I always lament about the sheer number of books that I want to read vs. the actual amount of time that I have to read all the amazing books. Yet we all just keep stacking up the books we want to read, to keep us excited and inspired. Some of my favorite inspired humans have an "emotional support book stack" somewhere in their vicinity.

As many who've been around me long enough know, I'm an insatiable bookworm, always having leaned into imaginary worlds since I could read As I young girl. As a teenager, I had someone important to me turn me into soft science fiction as a genre; I remember the exhilaration of how prophetic these books were as I read Octavia E Butler, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K Le Guin, Frank Herbert, George Orwell, I began to have language to name the layers of injustices and incongruences that the world held all around me.

In my grieving process in the last couple of years, I leaned heavily back into the world of both historical and speculative fiction, moving backward and forward in the constructs of time and storytelling to try and sense-make and find my way through an emotionally debilitating time.

Over the last few decades, these book universes became elders themselves in a way, as I grappled with questions and feelings and reflections that I couldn't quite articulate or bring up to the surface. In my daily creative process, I often use a quote or a passage in a book as a prompt to begin journaling, like I was having a conversation with the author, character, or idea in the book.

Some of these musings you all are privy to here, as I have used social media platforms to "learn out loud" as I share quotes/images and my thoughts and responses to them. I have an online "Personal Knowledge Management" system that I have dubbed my "Idea Culture." ( i.e like a sourdough culture but for thoughts, ideas, and seeds of thoughts that grow into essays and other creative writing)., I will be sharing more about this process on this Substack, for there was a lot of interest when I posted this short essay about my linked note-making system. I was deeply inspired by my time studying and learning from several brilliant creatives who use linked personal knowledge management systems to support their creative endeavors over the last 2-3 years. Bob Doto, Nick Milo, and Tiago Forte were the first ones I learned from, and from there have engaged in an online community of practice with authors who are supporting their writing, research, reading, and other knowledge cultivation with amazing digital and analog tools and practices. I will share more about each of them and what I have learned from them in future essays in this growing series on my linked and relational "idea culture" practice.

I rarely watch TV or movies, and I lean heavily towards books and audiobooks as my entertainment. It is so helpful for supporting my imagination over the highly stimulating TV/movie media. As a GenX latchkey kid, I often buried myself in a book on the long afternoons when the house was empty with me and my sibling home after school. It is still a longstanding practice of having a book companion around me.

Every year, I get excited about the potential of all the books I will read in the year ahead. I largely read on a Kindle ( both using a Kindle Paperwhite and also the Kindle App on my phone) but I also read from paperback books from time to time. I love that I always have multiple books with me on my phone using the Kindle App. I typically read between 30 and 50 books in a year, a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and memoir. I use my Notion book tracker as well as my Kindle app “Reading Insights” to keep track of my reading streaks. I try and read for at least 30 minutes a day. I use the Libby App via my local Library to check out ebooks that I read on my Kindle app.

I allow for some spontaneity in my TBR stack, but I always like to make sure to queue up at least 15-18 books in the Midwinter to get myself excited for the reading year ahead. Here are the first 18 that I have put onto my TBR for 2024. These are books that have been patiently waiting, ones that have come well recommended for a multitude of reasons.

Here is my Notion 2024 TBR Gallery page of my Physical Library Database.

Here are some closeups of the first 18 books I have stacked up, 3 already in progress.

Currently Reading:

• Where the Past Begins; Memory and Imagination by Amy Tan

• The Bookbinder by Pip William ( I loved reading “Dictionary of Lost Words last year by the same author)

• Right Story, Wrong Story by Tyson Yunkaporta

Want to Read:

• Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah ( Kiowa author)

• Yellowface by R. F Kuang

• Ancestor Trouble; A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton

• Quaking of America; An Embodied Guide to Navigating our Nation’s Upheaval and Racial Reckoning by Resmaa Menekem

• In My Own Moccasins by Helen Knott ( Cree Author)

• Black Water; Family, Legacy, and Blood Memory by David Robertson ( Cree Author)

• Tastes Like War by Grace Cho

• Assimilation; an Alternative History by Catherine S Ramirez

• Inheritance of Orquidea Divina by Zoraida Cordova

• Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something; A Writer’s Guide by Susan Griffin

• Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa ( Palestinian author)

• Returning Home to our Bodies by Abigail Rose Clarke

• The Home Place; Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham

• I’ve Been Here All the While; Black Freedom on Native Land by Alaina Roberts

• The Hakawati by Rabih Alammedine ( Lebanese author)

I use Notion as my Book Library Tracker. I used to use Goodreads app, but I find I don't really always care for the social and commercial element of that platform, so I have built my own book tracker in the ever-adaptable Notion platform. If anyone is interested in a full tutorial on how I build my TBR and Library in Notion, comment below!

I am not a "monogamous" book reader, I usually have 1 to 3 books going at once based on mood ( typically a novel, a non-fiction book, and a memoir of sorts). But I try not to have too many books going at once, because I truly love getting sucked into the plot of a book and getting deep into that imaginative world the author has created. I also love marginalia and note-making while reading, even with fiction books. In my relational "idea culture," it’s important to always be in a form of conversation with the author and ideas in each book, it helps create a better working memory and also helps us process and digest what we are reading in relationship to our own lives. This practice has deepened my reading experience. I hope to do an essay here on Substack all about how I read a book (both fiction and non-fiction) to get the best out of my reading experience at the moment, but also to note-make to increase relational memory.

What books are on your TBR stack this winter? Feel free to drop recommendations of books that you loved from 2023 that you think I'd enjoy. If there is interest, I will do a post reviewing some of my highlights from my Finished books from 2023.