My New Year's resolution? Read more books!

To read or not to read / So many books ... so little time.

Happy New Year everyone!

We're less than a week into 2016, and just as everyone is writing out their New Year's resolutions, I've jotted down a few of my own.

One resolution that's near the top of my list each year is to read more. "So many books ... so little time," reads the slogan printed on one of my tattered, well-worn navy-colored t-shirts that I bought a few years ago at The Elliott Bay Book Company, one of my favorite independent bookstores in the country, located on Capitol Hill in Seattle, Washington.

Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle /
One of my favorite independent bookstores in the country. 

When I say "read more" I mean books. Oh, sure. I stay abreast of current events by reading The New York Times, both in print and online, on a daily basis, and I enjoy giving a good read to periodicals like Monocle, the London-based monthly that covers world affairs, culture, food, and design. 

And, of course, there's always perusing my Facebook news feed, to stay current on what's trending, too.

But, what about books, you ask?

Roger Angell / This Old Man: All in Pieces.
This book is on my reading list for 2016.

Yes, books, remember them? It's the foundation behind what made Amazon.com one of the most successful online retailers. Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Netflix, before texting sapped all of our intellectual energy, there were books. I have several bookshelves at home lined with hundreds of titles that I've bought or received as gifts over the years. I'm proud of my collection of books by The New Yorker writers Roger Angell and Calvin Trillin, among many. However, a few years ago, in a space-saving and budget-cutting effort, I trimmed back on the number of new titles I bought and, instead, decided to start making better use of the local public library.

Looking back on 2015, I can say without boasting that I made good use of my Oakland Public Library card. I checked out seven books at our local branch library. One thing I've learned about libraries is this: If you're willing to wait for a popular best-seller or a new title to become available, checking out library books is a good way to save money (and, I might add, bookshelf space) while also showing support for public libraries.

Watching Comedy Central's The Daily Show, I've found, is a pretty good barometer about good books to read, and before he left the show last summer, former host Jon Stewart always brought out the best in authors. You could judge by his interest in a book if it was worth reading. Fortunately, new Daily Show host Trevor Noah is carrying on the tradition begun by Stewart.

Among the books which I read during 2015 were:

Mark Bittman on food / A Bone To Pick 

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
Midnight in Siberia by David Green

A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Jimmy Carter

The Children of Willesden Green: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival by Mona Golabek

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan

Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

You Can't Make This Up by Al Michaels

Mona Golabek / The Children of Willesden Lane:
Beyond the Kindertransport:
A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival

A Bone to Pick: The Good News and Bad News About Food by Mark Bittman

Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want by Tess Vigeland

Among the ties that bind these titles are my interest in non-fiction, memoirs, sports, food, travel and public radio personalities, as well as interest in world religions. And, of course, good writing and good stories always garner my attention.

Looking ahead, I wonder if it's possible that I can increase my output to 12 books, thus reading an average of a book a month? Let's see, I've already started a wonderful memoir by the gifted New Orleans actor Wendell Pierce, The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, a Play, and the City That Would Not Be Broken, and I received Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by award-winning adventure writer Richard Grant as a Christmas gift from my brother. Plus, I can't wait to begin reading Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, the acclaimed 674-page memoir by Elvis Costello that spans his almost four-decade music career. So, yes, reading a book a month seems like a reasonable goal.

I'm optimistic.

Now, if I can just somehow find a way to unplug my TV set and turn off my iPhone.

Photos of Elliott Bay Book Company by Michael Dickens © 2015. Book illustrations: Courtesy of Google Images. 

A New Year's resolution: Read more books!

Reflections from a bookstore window /
 The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle.

So many books ... so little time, reads the slogan printed on one of my tattered navy-colored t-shirts. It's a well-worn one that I bought a few years ago from The Elliott Bay Book Company, one of my favorite independent bookstores, located in Seattle.

As the middle of January approaches, many of us -- including yours truly -- are still drawing a list of New Year's resolutions. 

One of my resolutions for 2014 is to read more. Oh, sure, I stay abreast of current events by reading The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle, both in print and online, on a daily basis, and I enjoy giving a good read to the Life & Arts section of the Financial Times of London each weekend.

And, of course, there's always perusing my Facebook newsfeed, too, to stay current on what's trending.

But, what about books, you might ask? Yes, books, remember them? Before Twitter, before Facebook, before texting sapped all of our intellectual energy, there were books.

Looking back on 2013, I can say with pride that I made better use of my Oakland Public Library card than ever before. I checked out several books at our local branch library. I've learned that if you're willing to wait for a popular best-seller to become available, checking out library books is a good way to save money (and, I might add, bookshelf space) while also showing support for one's local public library.

Watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report regularly, I find both shows to be good barometers about good books to read -- and Stewart, especially, is one of the best interviewers on TV and always brings out the best in authors. You can judge by Stewart's interest in a book if it is worth reading. 

With kudos to Stewart, among the books which I checked out from my local public library last year -- and read cover to cover -- were:

Fawzia Koofi:
"As you grow older
you will learn
about loyalty."

• Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter by the American sportswriter, novelist and NPR commentator Frank Deford.

• The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future by the Afghan politician and women's rights activist Fawzia Koofi. 

• Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by the highly successful American pro basketball coach Phil Jackson.

• Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography by the American journalist Richard Rodriguez.

Currently, I am ploughing my way through the 468-page Cooked: A Natural Transformation by the American author, journalist, activist and academic Michael Pollan.

I tend to favor non-fiction over fiction books. One thing that unites my list of books I read last year is a spiritual quality found in each of them. For instance:

In Darling, Richard Rodriguez, who is considered one of the most prominent Hispanic essayists in America, speaks out of an illumination of the “desert God” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam — a divinity that “demands acknowledgment within emptiness”, wrote The New York Times in its Sunday Book Review section last fall. And, for Rodriguez, who is gay, it extends to a more personal history, too: the ways in which he has resisted, and felt himself resisted by, the Roman Catholic Church.

In Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter, The New York Times wrote of Frank Deford: "His work has helped shape our contemporary view of sports as an enterprise populated not by sublime gods, untouchable athletes, heroes and goats, but by beings recognizable as men and women."

Meanwhile, in Fawzia Koofi's memoir, The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future, written to her daughters, she explores the complexities of Afghan society and Islam and her determination to become an educated woman and live in freedom despite constant threats on her life by Islamic extremists.

Eleven Rings:
The Soul of Success

Finally, there's plenty to absorb in Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, and Phil Jackson quotes from the Grateful Dead, William James, Thelonius Monk, Abraham Maslow and Lao-Tzu, among many. The book reflects Jackson's polymathy. "In the space of a page, he toggles from psychotherapy to Native American customs to Christianity to Buddhism and back to 'two recent studies published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology'," The New York Times wrote in its review of the book.

As my time allows, this year I would love to go back and catch up with some of my favorite authors like Calvin Trillin (Alice, Let's Eat), Roger Angell (The Summer Game) and Michael Lewis (Moneyball). While I've read many of the books written by Trillin, Angell and Lewis -- all of them wonderful American authors -- I haven't read them all!

Also, I would love to tackle the intellect of the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and the literary brilliance of Stephen Fry and Nick Hornby.

Add to that, I've always been intrigued by the late Eudora Welty, the American author of short stories and novels about the American South, and would love to make the time to read one of her short story collections.

If I can average to read a book a month in 2014 -- 12 by the end of the year -- I'll be happy and, I'm sure, feel enriched by the experience. 

Indeed, so many books ... so little time.

Photo of Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013.