#jasmine guillory

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions but this year I set out to read 100 books. I would say for no other reason than to challenge myself but truly it was rooted in the fact that I had fallen out of love with reading. I had spent much of my life a total bookworm but somewhere in my late 20s I just…stopped reading. It could have been the shorter commutes where there was no time to settle in, or the fact that I wanted to be a kindle person and just very much wasn’t, or that I had a home overflowing with books that I didn’t want to pick up but felt guilty buying books I did want to pick up. Regardless of the reason, I wasn’t reading and I felt horrible about it. So, 2020 came around and I set a goal (shout out to goodreads for their reading challenge.) 

There were no rules to the challenge, though I did decide that I wanted to read actual books whenever possible (remember, the kindle was my downfall,) I wanted to leverage my Boston Public Library card whenever possible (shoutout to the Lucky Day Section for getting me access to the books that usually had waitlists a mile long,) and I would not force myself to finish books I didn’t like. Things were plugging along for the first quarter of the year. Plenty of great books (some greater than others) and a real sense of momentum. I was a reader again! 

And then came COVID, a time when people were picking up hobbies and working out at home, and learning to grow wild yeast in jars — all while a once in a lifetime pandemic hovered around us. I didn’t pick up a new hobby (though I did buy a very expensive punch needling kit that I have yet to touch.) I just kept reading. I worked through the backlog of the library books I had stashed before they closed. I started throwing money at small booksellers and bookshop.org. I relished in the escapism of fiction and the rabbit holes of googling topics that came up in non-fiction. I let myself cry and laugh when those releases felt hard to come by in real life. 

And when the protests and calls for justice for Black people in America rose after George Floyd’s murder I used books by Black authors to re-educate and challenge me. To push me to be a better, more active, more honest ally. 

2020 is not the year any of us thought it would be but it will be the year that I read 100 books — I’m currently at 45 and taking suggestions. It will be the year I fell back in love with reading. It will be the year that I remembered how books can buoy me in rough times and delight me in happy ones. It’s a weird year — I’m just trying to make something good out of it. 

Check out some of the books Liz has read so far below!

Who imagine when I read The Wedding Date:

Alexa Monroe

Drew Nichols