2021 Reading Log

3 min readNov 24, 2020

I’ve always wanted to be an avid book reader — the kind of person who reads on the subway, learning something new and feeling something profound while turning the pages on their morning commute, or on their desk with a cup of coffee in hand, or even better, on the beach, basking in the afternoon sun.

Unfortunately, there’s always been a slight (or not-so-slight) gap between my idealized version of self and the reality. I’m not incredibly proud to say that I can probably count the number of books I’ve read from the front to back on one hand, if I were to restrict the criteria to the past two years since starting college, and to books that were not required by any of my classes. My mom likes to say that I buy books just for decoration because I love to buy them, but I hardly finish any of them.

So here I am, writing my reading list for several reasons:

So that I can hold myself accountable to reading the books that I bought “for decoration.”
Because I love making lists, and crossing things off lists makes everything more fun.
Because I am already about 1/3 of the way into my gap year and I want to spend this time learning to become the avid book reader I want to be.

I’m still not really sure how Medium works, but I figured that it would be nice to have some digital record of the books I read and my takeaways. Some of the books will be books I’ve read in high school or in college but want to revisit, but most will be brand new. Few will be in Korean or French, but most will be in English. I hope to read widely, so I included memoirs, essays, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc. All of them — I hope — will help me become wiser, more empathetic, and more worldly.

Update: Still using this reading list even though I am no longer in my gap year! I’m so grateful for my dad who encouraged me to pick up reading during my gap year.

Update 2: This Reading List will be a compilation of the books I read from the end of 2020 to the end of 2021. Making a new one for 2022 for better organization!

So here it is, my Reading List:

(Once I’ve read a book, I’ll link my takeaways. I’ll also put a heart next to the ones I particularly enjoyed.)

2021 Reading Log

So here it is, my Reading List:

Written by coco